LARSEN & BRUSGAARD HISTORY

In the mid 1970s when Relative Work was in its early stages in Denmark, two pioneers in this discipline, Niels Brusgaard and Mads Larsen found out that it was so much fun to make hook-ups in freefall that sometimes one could nearly forget to look at the altimeter!

Being mechanical and electronic engineers, they soon came up with the idea of making an audible alarm which would sound at a preset altitude to warn that it was time to track away and open the canopy.

To speed things up in building the instrument, it was easiest to "borrow" grandmother’s wall barometer, put a switch, a battery and a loud speaker module. By means of adjusting the distance from the aneroid to the switch, the altitude when the warning should sound could be controlled.

The first (bulky) prototypes worked as planned and a small production series of 10 units was immediately sold to the local skydivers.

Later the same year, Niels and Mads, being members on the Danish National 8-way team went to participate in an International Championship in France and brought several more prototypes with them. They also got sold immediately!

Now it was time to think big! The prototype should be made into a nice looking sport instrument. Soon the company LARSEN & BRUSGAARD was founded and the first real production series of the "DYTTER" was started. This model sold very well for many years. New models (Pro-Dytter and Pro-Track) were developed. These instruments could sound more than just one warning signal and among the features in the Pro-Track was the possibility to store data during the freefall for PC download and analyzing after the jump.

LARSEN & BRUSGAARD is continually developing new models and now offers a wide range of products, which includes both audible and visual altimeters.

Today’s LARSEN & BRUSGAARD products satisfy all the skydivers’ needs from the novice to belly flyers, head down, freefly, swoop, wingsuit and even the tactical military jumper.