[Brass Monkey]

Just a few lines about buying, fitting and diving the HUD.

Step one. Buying the HUD
I ordered the HUD a couple of months ago via E mail, Uri was quick to respond, over the course of four or five mails he told me of my options and asked about my requirements. Things like the sequencing of the LED’s extras such as VR3 connection and buddy light were discussed. The LED sequencing didn’t really bother me, as far as I’m concerned the factory set up is fine and I’ll be diving the unit with the attitude that anything other that green LED’s and the handsets will get an extra check. Having the VR3 the real time deco option is very nice so I went for that. The buddy light I chose to do without. I did however go for the deeper unit (only difference being the connectors) not that I need the extra depth or anywhere near it. It was purely for the Fischer connectors. The deeper unit uses these throughout; Uri did offer to fit a Fischer connector to the O2 cell cable (the one that goes in the scrubber lid) this way I would have only been paying the little extra for one connector. In the end I chose to go with Fischer’s throughout though it was nice to be given other options.
Step two. Fitting the HUD.
The HUD arrived nicely packed surviving the ravages of Middle Eastern customs men among others. Once unpacked it took a couple of minutes to figure out what was to go where. Being a typical man I had a good rummage through before looking at the instructions. Once I did though I found them to be easy to understand with none of the nonsense you normally see with electronic items. Straight forward and concise is about the best way to describe them.
Installing the unit, this is something that may scare a lot of people. Take it from me there’s nothing difficult about this. It is however scary to drill a whole in the scrubber lid. The hole size for mine was 14mm (I believe its 16mm for the 100m unit), so off I went and bought a 14mm drill. This I put in the pedestal drill at work and proceeded to drill the hole. Now get this I managed to drill this while holding on to the scrubber head by hand. I do believe this could have easily been done with a hand drill. In fact I would have felt a lot better doing it that way than getting another person to operate the pedestal drill while I held onto the scrubber lid. OK hole drilled time to fit the thing to the lid. Again another easy process, the instructions were very easily followed with all wires being color coded and no soldering required. Every thing you need is in the kit. I chose not to use the small screw lock connectors Uri provides for joining the cell wires. Instead I twisted the wires together and used electrical heat shrink tubing. I won’t go on any more about fitting the thing as it really was easy, it’s surprising how much room there actually is in the scrubber lid. After a couple of minutes shuffling the cables around everything fitted in nicely and I was able to do up the lock nut on the out let pipe and secure everything. Once the Inspiration was rebuilt I made up 4 strips of ½” Velcro and used these to secure the LED cable to the breathing hose. I had also purchased the SS bracket for mounting the HUD on the mouth piece so finished the whole thing off by securing the HUD with the two small pieces of Velcro that are attached to the bracket.
Step three. Diving with the HUD.
Simple, turn the HUD on by fitting a connector to the main unit then press the button on the side of the main unit when calibrating the Inspiration. I like things that work this way, no extra menus or other nonsense to deal with just a quick press of a button and it’s done.
On low set point the three green LED’s flicker on and off, no more forgetting to change set point! Once high set point is selected they are a constantly on, nice and re assuring seeing all three cells all the time. I did various flushes etc to see how the HUD behaved, needles to say it was right on the ball. Like I said earlier I’m not much bothered about what sequence the LED’s work in, if they are anything but green I’m looking at the hand sets. This is selling the HUD short though as it’s possible to totally ignore the handsets and still know what’s going on with your PPO2. Maybe I’ll learn what all the different sequences mean later but for now it suits me just to use the HUD as a constant re assurance, I still check my handsets but now I know what’s going on all the time. I’ve only put in around 6 hours on the HUD so far and can’t imagine diving without it now. It’s like mobile phones and other gadgets, we got by without them for years but now we have them there’s no going back. I have tried to keep this simple but informative with a view to letting others know that it’s no big deal to fit one of these things and operating/diving with it is so simple it’s not worth thinking about. Chasey covered the whole thing very nicely but hey he’s a clever bloke, if a daft Geordie can “make a wana these work all reet like” then anybody can.

I talked with a few people about buying the HUD before I actually made the commitment, some said “I think it’s overpriced”, some said “it’s not good diving practice to use that instead of the handsets”.
To those that said it’s overpriced, just look at the cost of the new electronics package. At least this is totally independent of the Inspiration. Anyway I’ll stick with Oscar Wild, “I’m interested in the value of things not the price”. This is very valuable to me, after all how much do you value your own life.
To the ones that say it’s not good diving practice, I say you can still check your hand sets but now you have an extra source of information. One that you can see all the time.

Disappointments: None really, except for that horrible poncy red Velcro supplied with the mounting bracket. This had to go, in its place I used the small Velcro strips that you get with mobile phone charges to keep the cable tidy.

Regards,

Dave.