My Neptune works!

[jerry81 10]

Or at least appears to. Granted, I only did seven jumps with it this weekend, but so far it's doing what it's supposed to- shows altitude when worn on the hand, beeps when used as an audible and logs my jumps.
Mine has version 1.15 loaded on it (I'll update as soon as I find a cheap USB-IR port), so I don't know if any of these bugs have been worked out already but this is what I've noticed so far;

Airplane mode: the time to altitude was a source of amusement for everyone in our An-2; since the target altitude can't be changed in this version the Neptune was calculating the time we need to get to 4km and was displaying something around 20 minutes from take-off to exit at 3km. The rate of climb was jumping from 50m to 150m per minute every couple of seconds- while I know that our airplane does climb very unevenly I think the reason for such differences is still in the software.

Log book: One very obvious bug in this version is the way you move from one jump to the next; Go to previous jump moves you to the next jump and vice versa. I hope this has been taken care of in the newer software versions.
Another suspicious thing were the recorded speeds; sometimes, they seem alright and sometimes they're either much too big or much too small. Example: on one jump, my speed at 3000 was reported to be 100kmh (60mph) and on another 255kmh (170mph). Both were 2-way freefly dives so the break-off and deployment altitudes were more or less the same. I was wearing the Neptune inside my helmet (Z1 Evo). On the other hand, the max speeds seemed more or less OK. It would be interesting to compare this with a Protrack (too bad I don't have one at hand) and to see the graphs of these dives. Regarding this, a friend had an interesting idea- since the Neptune has a dot matrix display, it could probably show a rough graph of the speed in relation with time in relation with altitude. (Thus diminishing the need for a computer program that does the same thing. I think it's a great idea, but a bit uneconomical for Alti-2)

General; when used as an audible, the Neptune issues a series of beeps at 1000' (~300m). Although it's pretty obvious, I think this could be mentioned in the manual as well.
A nice feature would be some kind of keypad lock or just a sequence you'd have to press to turn it on. Even though it's a bit farfetched there is a possibility that a key will be pressed when I put my snug-fitting helmet on.
Also, I noticed that the Neptune emits a faint humming sound whenever you press a key if the backlight is enabled. I don't think this is a cause for concern, but it did freak me out for a while before I realized what was causing the sound.

I know Alti-2 has a form for suggestions and feedback at their webpage, but I want to try the latest version before making an ass out of myself by complaining about something that's already fixed. This short review was just meant to report my first impressions and overall satisfaction with the Neptune; after reading about all the bugs found in it, I was half expecting mine to shut itself off in freefall, but so far it's performed quite well and the few bugs that I've found can be corrected. Over the internet and with an IR port. How cool is that? (Yes, I'm a gadget freak too) I must say I'm satisfied with my purchase.

btw, if you haven't already, read Kevin's review for more details about how the thing works.

---