bofh

The Scirocco is a nine cell cross braced canopy where the three middle cells are divided into four minicells each (instead of the usual three).

I've only got around 50 jumps with my Scirocco, but I like it more and more.

It opens soft and on heading if you steer it with the rear risers during opening. It opens great both at full speed and at hop & pops.

I jump a [email protected] where I start my 270 final at 240m. It is easy to get it to dive and to keep it diving. I just do harness turns, but its also easy with the front risers, it doesn't build up a heavy pressure. I've done 630s and higher rotations with the front risers as well.

When spiraling in the harness together with my friend in a [email protected], I have to break slightly with the rears to not dive away from him!

One can also fly it for a really long time on the rears during landing, making it easier to keep up the speed.

Its probably the cheapest crossbraced canopy around with a list price of 1850 USD with RDS and HMA-350 or 400 lines. A new set of lines (including change) is 150USD!

The helmet fits well on the ground and I can have my glasses under the visor. When tracking, the chin part gets pushed in a bit and my nose hits the visor. Not a big deal, but slightly annoying.

What's really annoying is that the locking mechanism is made of two pins and two drilled holes in the visor. Sometimes it is hard to close it, but once it is closed, it stays closed. What's worse is that within 50 jumps, cracks had gone from the drilled holes to the edges of the visor. I contacted the dealer, he contacted Paratec and they sold a new visor to the dealer, which he sold to me at a price below what he paid. Really bad customer service from Paratec.

With cold weather I often got some fog on the visor that quickly froze over so I had to open the visor for canopy flight.

The altitrack comes in a clear plastic throw away box together with a little bag to store it in, an embroided patch and three manuals. One real manual, a quick start guide (just enough to use it as an altimeter) and a "road map" paper that shows all menus and how to navigate them.

The manual (70 pages, each 12x9cm) explains everything together with images of each menu in an easy to read style, but it is rather wordy and some of the information is repeated a few times. There is a good index in the beginning so one can skip most of the hand-holding and go directly for the thing one is interesting in.

The altitrack comes in a few colours, black or silvery-goldish were available when I got mine, and the face comes in four different versions: meter or feet and a symetrical or asymetrical scale. I choose the asymetrical meter scale and mine shows 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 and 50 x 100m. There are half way marks between each number.

The face also has the pro-dytter's "access" and "low battery" leds, both work just like on the pro-dytter. On the side there are two keys to be able to manually adjust the elevation (it does that automaticly by default) and to turn backlight on/off. There is also a rubber covered connector for the USB-track cable. The size is about the same as a barigo and the rubber on the back is designed so it can fit nicely over the side of the hand, near the thumb. The display is rotated 45 degrees compared to the barigo, making it slightly easier to read.And that's it, until one turns the unit over.

The backside is the interface to the loggbook and setup features. Here there are three more keys, "left", "right" and "dot". The display is an old-school LCD with pictures and 7-segment numbers, so no fancy graphs are possible to display. It is easy to read, but there is no backlight. Navigating the logbook and setup is easy and quick, pressing dot to switch screens and left/right to navigate the current screen. It is probably not too hard to accidently enter the setup mode (just hold the "dot" key for three seconds), but all important settings are well protected and almost impossible to change by misstake (one has to change a number to match a "matching number" and then press dot). The keys are near my knuckles when I'm wearing it and if I press the display, the "dot" key is pressed, but it requires some force. One can chose to have things displayed in meter or feet, mph or km/h, Celsius or Farenheit. Like the pro-track airspeed can be displayed in both SAS and TAS.

Before jumping, one can set the kind of jump (there are 8 different kinds, two of them change how the unit works - student, for logging short delay jumps and "slow" for birdman jumps) and while looking throw the logbook, it is displayed.

So, what's good and what's bad?

On the front's two keys, one is used to enter height adjustment mode and one is used to turn on/off backlight, but which does what isn't marked in any way. If one uses the wrong one when intending to turning on the backlight, it stops to automaticly adjust the height until after the next jump.

Log menu #2 (there are three) is used to look at the log for a specific jump and play it forward and back (and also to start analog playback). The playback is first played back at 1/4 of normal speed and can be increased by pressing left/right more times. Unfortunally one can't slow down the speed again or stop it. Pressing the other key only changes direction of the playback. Not a big deal, but slightly annoying.

The manual claims the clock has a precision of +-4 MINUTES / month! Sure, one will not use the altitrack as a regular clock, but still +-4 MINUTES can be the next/previos load after a few months into the season unless one remembers to set the clock now and then. It is however easy to set the clock and I often just change to the Xth jump of the day.

Unlike the Neptune, one has to pay more to be able to access the unit from a computer and afterwards it is a bit hard to put the rubber protection back over the connector (on the Neptune an IR interface is used, which almost all laptops have and the program is gratis for Neptune owners).

The unit feels solid and looks quite good (mine is of the silvery-goldish kind), but on close inspection there are a few rather visible casting marks around the buttons and strap holders which look less good. I don't know if the colour is painted on or if it is the plastic that has been coloured.

It is easy to find the information one searches for, both in the menus of the unit and in its manuals.

I don't know if it is good or bad, but the unit has a clearly marked reset key under the battery lid, the firmware version is displayed when it is powered on and the manual explains how to udate the firmware. Hopefully it will not be needed... :-)

The unit seems well thought out. Besides good protection of irreversible actions (and power off), the unit also refuses to do an analog play back of an old jump while in "jump mode". When the unit powers off, it puts the dial at 2000m and at power on it shows what kind of scale it expects on the front (in my case it says 6000 m). All to prevent nasty surprises.

On one of my camera jumps the minimum speed has been recorded as 105km/h, which seems really low (I didn't use any wings). Perhaps the unit got fooled by me putting my hands in front of my chest while speeding up?

Anyway, the display is easy to read and the height displayed matches my pro-dytter perfectly.

My 139 Safire2, loaded at around 1.3, seem to stay up longer on breaks than my old Sabre 170, yet it is easy to build up speed and dive almost vertical on a straight final with both fronts, making it easy to perform "safe" swoops. Making a 180 degree hook doesn't require much force either. It is quite easy to land it at low speeds too and even if one doesn't pitch it, one can still land standing up without a problem.

The only drawback is the 900ft it takes to open, but then again its hard to combine a fast opening with a soft one.