Has anyone in the US - especially folks with HW issues - actually heard anything back from Jetblack? I haven’t.
Sounds like the distributor in Europe is on top of things, while the US has to deal with Jetblack in AU directly.
How did you contact them? I’m UK based and used the website form.
Same. Via https:// www .jetblackcycling. com / support/
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I wanted to get my concerns over to them ready for returning it faulty as much as anything. I know I can do the 30 day return, but I’m not paying shipping to return a faulty unit.
(Especially if I have to return it to another country!)
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If you’re in the U.S., my understanding is the unit will need to be returned to Wisconsin @ our expense. That’s bad if it’s a defective trainer. Jet Black needs to step up & pay shipping. If they don’t, it’s going to create even more ill will.
David
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Support has been very responsive for me. I’ve been emailing back and forth with them about the vibrations and power issues. They have suggested taking the side panel off and looking for anything obvious. Since it only happens under load, he suggested “The contact point of bearing / cassette body. Cassette body itself. Misaligned belt on base pulley.”
For the power issue, they obviously suggested the 4.12 firmware which does seem to help significantly, especially for rides where the trainer gets hot. At the beginning of the ride and for easier rides with less torque (either low power or high cadence), the power gap remains about 10w or so for me. If the ride gets the flywheel to the point that I can’t even put my hand on it, the power is within about 5w.
I had my first WiFi drop yesterday during a 1 hour TdZ ride. I checked my AP logs and there is no log of the connection dropping. It seems the dropout occurred at a different layer than the “physical” connection to the AP.
Support has been very candid and said their engineers are doing a deep dive now to try and figure out the WiFi issues. He said for the 4.12 firmware they “only made one change from .9 to 12. Around timing, if WiFi dropped out for any less than 5 secs the trainer would hold previous connection”.
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I believe the protocol for virtual shifting just sends the gear ratios to the trainer so that is entirely in Zwift’s court AFAIK. I would like to have an advanced mode where I can put in the exact gear ratio for each slot, but that will probably never happen. At least the Zwift Ride allows you to customize the gearing, the Zwift Play controllers don’t have any customization at all. I’m not sure why they can’t offer the same options with the SRAM style of pushing both play buttons at the same time to shift the front gear. I prefer that anyway.
You don’t have this option, but if you are using a 2x, using the smaller chainring in the front will effectively compress the space between the gear ratios for the default shifting, making each gear a little closer together. It does make Gear 24 a little short for sprinting for me (I have a 46/33 in the front).
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Thanks for the info Aaron. In that case I think Zwift need to improve it. I see no reason why Zwift cannot configure the “compensating” gear option like SRAM allows. That might make things feel a bit smoother.
I am just off a lunchtime session, it was pretty much ruined as I had 3 wireless drops. Each time connections restored by unplugging power to the trainer and powering back on. HR did not reconnect.
I am now going to use BT instead of wireless and see does that improve.
What firmware are you running 4.9 or preview 4.12? On the 4.9 firmware, I had about 150 miles with absolutely no drop outs. On the 4.12 firmware, I had 1 drop in about 50 miles. The support said it seems to affect some people and not others so they are having trouble diagnosing it.
Hopefully BT will fix it for you, but then you lose the Race Mode which sucks a bit.
I still get race mode on bt.
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I am already on 4.12… I liked race mode but had to change zwift to 3 second average as the constant number change was just too much… it still updates faster then previous trainer.
Here is snip of wirelres drops in my ride today. This is cadence and power. 1st two drops I had to get off the bike and unplug power and reconnect. Last two small drops seemed to fix themselves.
Here is HR which did not reconnect when on wireless. I had to change to BT.
Stacked view
Changing to 3-second average only changes what you see on the HUD. It does not change how power is recorded by the game. Race mode still works when you use that setting.
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Exactly Paul, I did that change just for the visuals and happy that race mode is still working in the background.
how do you know when you’re in race mode?
If you have power displayed as instantaneous, it should update frequently.
I’ve had my JB since December and its ready to go on my Zwift ride
But as its stands I wont doing that for a while
Disappointed doesn’t even cut it think i will stick with the current trainer zwift one.
Which is faultless 
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Oh cool, I was thinking Race Mode was only available on WiFi but maybe they added it for BT as well.
Try changing the “trainer resistance” in the Zwift settings. I think if you make it low, it feels like the gears are “closer together”. (although too low and it might just feel like you have too little resistance overall). But I at least noticed a difference moving the slider around between ~30% to 50%
(there is a cool Zwift bug where if you join a ride that has a minimum trainer resistance set, specifically Team Ladder races, it actually changes your trainer resistance to the minimum every time, instead of just limit it, so every time I join one of those events I have to manually change the slider back. sigh)
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This is why Shane is the only YouTuber/reviewer I actually follow—even my little girls love his videos (crazy, if you ask me, lol). He’s the only one who’s 100% transparent and doesn’t mind calling out a product when it sucks!