Altitron Digital Altimeter Issue

[Dean358 0]

Hi All,

My Digitude altimeter having finally died I purchased an Altitron Digital Altimeter. I like the big display but I'm having a problem with it's data logging. Although the AGL readings it's displaying on the plane and during a jump appear to be OK, on 6 out of 7 jumps the data logged by the device is corrupt. E.g., it will show I exited at 16,987 feet, my average speed was 297 MPH, top speed was 157 MPH and that I pulled at 66 feet. (This is just one example, there doesn't seem to be any consistency or pattern to the erroneous data.) I've tried a second unit, I've tried moving it from wrist to hand and I've tried reinitializing it -- no change in results. The USA distributer says they've never heard of this problem and the folks at my excellent local gear store are baffled. Any suggestions? This does not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about continuing to use this device :-)

Tnx,
Dean

www.wci.nyc

[billvon 2,394]

You're probably getting transients caused by the position of your hand relative to the wind and your body. I've seen similar behavior in a Digitude, with transient errors up to about 1000 feet on exit, and up to about 300 feet in freefall.

Is your altimeter accurate below about 5000 feet, at least within a few hundred feet? If so it will do its job. Being able to plot your exact exit height on a PC is cool but not all that important from a safety perspective.

[Dean358 0]

cool answer, tnx Bill. But why is it filtering out the transients on the realtime display but not in the data it captures? And if doesn't handle pressure transients correctly in it's captured data isn't this something the manufacturer might have noticed? Which leads to the obvious question, "what else didn't they notice or test for?"

BTW, I agree with you -- the ONLY thing I want an altimeter to do is to accurately tell me how high above the ground I am! But as the unit has jump log features I went though the menus just out of curiosity.

www.wci.nyc