kaba

hi at all, i did not say that my neptune is faulty at all or that i use poor batteries intentionally. i said i updated my neptune to v2.31 after problems under v2.2 and will test it now with the new software. i use a fresh and recommended battery as described by alti-2 and made anyone of you aware of the fact that alti-2 informs you about that matter during the update process. and please, read the neptune manual: on the bottom of any page it says: An altimeter is a device subject to malfunction, even when properly designed, built, assembled, maintained and used. Do not rely upon an altimeter for your safety. Your altimeter must only be considered as an aid when checking your altitude. to make it clear: i love my neptune, but i do recommend always and ever any kind of backup altimeter to have positive redundancy. i do develop and service electronic equipment for about 20 years now and do electronic repairs at my DZ. lithium battery technology and its problems are common sense to me. anything battery driven in my household is equipped with used cypres cells if possible therefore i extremly appreciate the fact, that the neptune does not use two li-cells in series as the pro-dytter does. and that the bigger 2450 battery is not that sensitive to temporarily increased storage temperature which might shorten the battery life. and sure, if the "get stuck"- issue continues, i will send my neptune to alti-2 for repair. but until then, given the fact, that probably the improved power managment of v2.31 fixes the mentioned problem i followed alti-2´s officially released advice to update the software and replace the battery. so until now i think there is no need to contact any field service. and the mentioned spare parts are all of mechanical nature having nothing to do with software or battery problems. if you lose the battery lid you really should not skydive if you lose one of the screws, americans are lucky, the thread is standard there, europeans have to dismantle an old notebook hard disk for example the o-ring, uiuiuih, there you might be right CU kaba

sorry pilotdave, wrong answer. i don´t want batteries for free, but a reliable altimeter. the update worked quite fine, and even with low battery voltage an altimeter should do simply what it´s name says: altitude measurement. by the way, i do not want any so called service person fumble around with my neptune for there are no serviceable parts than the battery, which i can handle myself. kaba

the update process probably drains the battery extremely. if you read the neptune updater instructions carefully you will realize that alti-2 wants you to use a new battery for the update process AND another new one for normal usage after the update. also keep in mind that v2.31 has a more accurate battery monitor eventually displaying "low voltage" where older firmware revisions still showed "battery full". by the way: my neptune v2.2b did 54 jumps, failing during freefall on jump 4 and 51, it got stuck displaying 0,5 km on jump 4 under canopy and 1,2 km on jump 51 during freefall. both jumps were not logged, a reset recovered functionality of the unit. the battery monitor showed 100% all the time, now after the update it shows 0%. another neptune v2.2b with new battery (jump 5) failed nearly the same way on the same load as my neptune jump 51 (stuck display under canopy, self reset) i will test my updated neptune with a new recommended battery and record any further failure. i use my neptune as an audible altimeter with swoop alerts disabled. for the problems mentioned above i do not recommend a neptune as solely altimeter. until then i recommend a second audible altimeter like timeout or dytter AND allways an additional mechanical altimeter like the altimaster or barigo preferably mounted to your rig. kaba