Though yours may be reliable and my third one has held up for 6 or so years that can't be said of the product in general. If they were dependable they would still be making them and putting money in the bank because all the development costs would have been recovered long ago. Two years ago I saw them for sale at a couple shops in Italy. Nothing here. Not good enough for us or less likely to come back and bite them?
Most of these instruments failed from water intrusion that occurred from descending substantial elevations while the instrument was wet. I discovered this while riding in heavy rain over a long distance including the climb of a 9000ft pass. The instrument worked flawlessly all day until I descended about 6000ft of that climb, at which time the typical failure symptoms appeared. As I recall, 9000ft atmospheric change is about 8ft of water.
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Your right about the battery covers but at least you can buy them. They are so poorly designed they should just toss them in an envelope when you call instead of making you buy them and a pair of batteries.
Two covers are part of the battery replacement set. Get the batteries from your bicycle shop or Avocet direct:
Most of these instruments failed from water intrusion that occurred from descending substantial elevations while the instrument was wet. I discovered this while riding in heavy rain over a long distance including the climb of a 9000ft pass. The instrument worked flawlessly all day until I descended about 6000ft of that climb, at which time the typical failure symptoms appeared. As I recall, 9000ft atmospheric change is about 8ft of water.
I cover mine with a plastic sandwich bag secured with a twist tie when riding in the rain. This seems to keep the water out of the unit, yet doesn't seem to affect the altimeter.
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Two covers are part of the battery replacement set. Get the batteries from your bicycle shop or Avocet direct:
I buy batteries for my 50 at Radio Shack (look for #386 (silver oxide), not 386A (alkaline)). Much cheaper than Avocet sells them for. I get about 5-6 battery changes out of a battery cover set before I need replacements. Palo Alto Bicycle stocks the covers separate from the batteries.
If your complaint is that the accumulated climb is not equal to the difference between the elevations at the top and bottom of a climb, I think you are being unrealistic - a climb such as our beloved Page Mill road here in the SF peninsula undulates quite a bit, and you certainly have to work to regain the losses. FWIW, my Suunto has a "stopwatch" mode that can measure the difference between the start elevation and the current elevation, in addition to the accumulated elevation change.
Peter: Funny you should mention Page Mill. You may have already seen it, but if not, I put up the downloaded profile from my ride up Page Mill last Sunday on our website, at
This is from a Ciclomaster HAC-4, which I've found does a great job of not only correctly indicating the total amount of climb on a ride (unlike the Cateye, which dramatically overstates climbing most of the time), but also follows the undulations quite well.
"Mike Jacoubowsky" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...
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If your complaint is that the accumulated climb is not equal to the difference between the elevations at the top and bottom of a climb, I think you are being unrealistic - a climb such as our beloved Page Mill road here in the SF peninsula undulates quite a bit, and you certainly have to work to regain the losses. FWIW, my Suunto has a "stopwatch" mode that can measure the difference between the start elevation and the current elevation, in addition to the accumulated elevation change.
Peter: Funny you should mention Page Mill. You may have already seen it, but if not, I put up the downloaded profile from my ride up Page Mill last Sunday on our website, at
This is from a Ciclomaster HAC-4, which I've found does a great job of not only correctly indicating the total amount of climb on a ride (unlike the Cateye, which dramatically overstates climbing most of the time), but also follows the undulations quite well.
It seems to me that the argument over whether an altimeter "correctly" takes into account small changes in elevation relies on whether you think the power needed to oversome such things is significant. Jobst thinks that freeway overpasses and underpasses shouldn't count because the power requirements are so small.
But if power requirements are the thing that altitude is supposed to be a proxy for (as opposed to the the absolute elevation), then you may be interested in what those power requirements are. The HAC-4 uses altitude change to estimate power. I've done the backwards thing and estimated altitude change using a power meter. See: "How to turn a $1500 power meter into a cheap altimeter" at: mywebpage.netscape.comaltimeter.htmlOpen ↗
