jstratfan

I'm the only one at my dz that wears them and routinely catch flak for it. The problem that I notice is experienced jumpers telling new jumpers that ear plugs aren't necessary. This is not only irresponsible, it's dangerous as well. I recommend to all of my students that they need to wear ear plugs from the start but invariably an experienced jumper will chime in with "I've been jumping for years without them..." or "you won't be able to hear your audible (when they get one)" (which is complete BS), etc. It seems to be mostly pride or being too *cool* that keeps skydivers from wearing ear plugs but this is one skydiver that will choose to wear them every jump.

I bought all three thru Rock Sky Market so they handled all returns. If you've never purchased anything from RSM, do it. They are phenomenal but because of that, I have never dealt specifically with L&B's customer service although I have only heard good things about them. All of the malfunctions happened at different times during a typical skydive: First time= immediately after exit. Viso read 14.4 when I left the plane but first check showed 0 and buttons didn't work. Second= landed, picked up chute, walking back to the hangar and started hearing a beeping sound. Alti worked fine for free fall and canopy descent but heading back inside pissed it off. Third= Cessna ride up, glanced at it during take off, display was normal (always takes a couple seconds to start reading), after a couple minutes I looked again and the time/date disappeared and the dash that separates the hours and minutes was blinking, buttons didn't work. Stayed that way thru free fall and canopy. Sent it back just like that so RSM could see what was going on. My L&B audible was with me for all three jumps and works perfectly. I *really* want to give a Viso one more try but I'll feel like an idiot if the fourth one mucks up (how many times will it take me to learn my lesson??). Definitely don't want to go back to the analog brick either...

In a span of roughly 5 months, I've had 3 Visos go belly up on me. The first crapped out on exit. The second one went crazy just after landing. The third and most recent was actually L&B's newest alti, the Ares. It locked up just before the plane took off never reading climb up or decent. It had 6 jumps on it. My audible was with me for all of them and worked flawlessly (guess I'll be setting those low speed chimes now) so I'm not completely anti-L&B but three altis in a few months is ridiculous. So I guess the N3 is my next best option? Anything I should know about the N3 before I go that route? Due to their popularity I really want to give L&B one more chance but they've had enough chances already. Any other options I should consider?