| Originally Posted by TVR I have toyed with the idea of a CCR for some time. As a bit of background, I have been diving for 7 years, got 250+ dives, a mixture of UK and overseas, and get in the water at least once a month, if not more often, plus have the opportunity of pool sessions every week.
There have been two main barriers to date that have stopped me from getting a rebreather:
1. Money - hopefully a new job is about to remove that!
2. Intimidation and snobbery
Now, intimidation/snobbery takes a couple of forms:
Firstly, CCR sounds scary - I mean, people die using these things! That doesn't sound like a hobby! OK - this is scaremongering - but I have to sell this to my wife and young family. I have done a lot of reading around this and done a lot of dives with rebreather users (albeit all Inspiration users). I am comfortable with the risks - at the end of the day, it is a piece of equipment - you need to use it correctly and give it respect, but otherwise this is not too drastically different to OC - the position remains that you cannot live underwater without some form of artificial breathing system.
Secondly, there is the snobbery thing. I have read a lot of posts from would-be RB divers. The responses seem to be one of two camps:
1. Soon everyone will dive RBs, so why not just start out this way and skip the twinset. This attitude seems to indicate an acceptance that provided you do the courses and understand what the RB is telling you (or what you need to tell it), then just get on with your diving. Just because you are not doing 80m plus expedition dives, does not mean that a RB is not a reasonable choice.
2. RBs are the preserve of the serious deep tech diver, so if you are not on trimix and diving 60m plus every week, then a RB is just a status symbol/toy and you are a twat if you dive one ("all the gear, no idea"). This is the attitude that has so far put me off - I would like to dive a CCR as I see it as benefiting my diving, but just because I am not doing mix dives every week, I don't want to get on a boat and be considered a flash twat just because I have a RB.
I will put my hands up - I currently dive to around 45m max, and keep my deco to as little as possible - although if there is something I particularly want to see, I'll extend that deco up to around 40 mins.
I am well aware that I can do these dives with my current twinset and a stage.
However, the way I look at it is why make things more difficult/uncomfortable - if I can do these dives with a RB, making the deco more efficient (even if I keep the run time similar for safety's sake) and I take the concerns over gas consumption away (albeit that my SAC is generally less than 10lpm), then why is this looked on as being an unacceptable reason for diving a RB?
Just because I am not (yet) diving mix, why does this make diving a RB unacceptable?
Maybe I am just paranoid, and theze concerns only really exist on t'net - but as an outsider looking into the world of RBs, it is a really daunting move.
btw - I am not looking for suggestions as to what RB to go for - I have decided that I will be arranging a comparison between an Inspo and a KISS (my heart says KISS at the moment!).
In summary, the reason for my post is that I would like to get a CCR, I would like to dive it and get the maximum benefit from it for the diving that I do, but I do not have any experience with RBs - I would like some advice from those that use them (rather than general comments as to whether they are going to kill me etc etc) as to whether there are significant matters that I have not addressed, or if I am just getting hooked up on internet stuff that doesn't really exist in the real world!
Thanks for reading this if you have managed to get this far!!!! |