First dive with my MCCR homebuild

[Silent]

Yup congratulations Jason, big balls of brass I think!

And he even came out smiling afterwards...

I'll let Jason decide which pictures he wants to post here on YD just so he can choose which is his 'best' side .

Neil.

P.S Now how deep did you say you wanted to try it at Dorry next week??

[zepp]

I arrived at Stoney Cove at silly o'clock just to make sure I got on the bottom car park which meant getting up at 4am and out of the house by 5am.
The moment I got there, I realised that I had forgot my Divelog card, so £15 please Sir......"My God!", I thought, "This had better be worth it"-Not a good start me thinks!
I had put everything together Saturday night and checked again for leaks etc, but wasn't happy with the way I had connected the mouthpiece to the DSV. I found it gave me jaw ache in the pool after only 20 minutes so I ended up down at my fathers garage until 10pm bashing a piece of old brass pipe into an oval shape to braze on the brass-bodied DSV; a bit of a "Heath Robinson" affair, but it worked so what the hell.
I kitted up, using the back of my pick-up as a platform, plugged in my suit inflator from my side slung bailout cylinder and discovered the hose was leaking from the crimped hose end...Thanks to John for the spare.
Anyway, here I was sitting at the waters edge trying to rearrange my harness and displays, when there was an almighty rush of gas, "Oh Sh#t!!!!", so I turn off my bail-out cylinder (10ltr with 35%), thinking it was coming from my Jetstream, but no, I had caught the direct feed to my wing which made the connector come off the inflator hose coupling, this wouldn't normally be a problem, but the inner valve had blown out leaving an open tube from the 1st stage. This few seconds caused me to lose over 100 BAR of diluent from my already small 2 litre cylinder. I was now unsure whether to dive or not, but I was assured that the remaining 50 BAR or so would be OK for a shallow dive to 10 mtrs.
John and Neil were now ready and were going to 'baby sit me' for the dive.
At the start and down to about 6 mtrs I found my weight to be about right, but what I couldn't understand was why after a couple of minutes I had to pick up a rock from the bottom. Descending further to ten metres and swimming around to check the PPO2 was staying within the limits, I found that I was becoming bouyant once again. I exhaled through my nose to lose some volume from the counterlung and all seemed good for a few minutes. I gave John the 'OK' signal and I descended to 15 mtrs, still keeping an eye on my monitors. I was now 20 minutes into the dive, so decided to turn around and make a slow ascent up the roadway to 6 mtrs to try out certain skills. After a couple of minutes I had noticed a gurgling from the loop, so ended the dive just incase my botched up mouthpiece I had thrown together only 12 hrs earlier hadn't self destructed.
Back at base, I stripped the unit down and found only about an eggcup full of water in the exhale hose, none in the scrubber and only a bit of condensation in the counterlung.
To sum up.....Lets forget the couple of 'minor' problems before I dropped in the water..., I am 100% pleased with the results and with a few minor alterations, I should have a rather unique mCCR that will be capable of much more challenging dives for a very reasonable cost.
I would like to express my thanks to John ( Narked at 90 ), and Neil (Silent) for their offer of buddying me to what was for them a rather short and shallow dive.
All images courtesy of Neil.

[Silent]

Nice write up Jason!

Glad I could be of assistance in your quest for rebreather uniqueness!

Does this mean we should start looking out for to start commercially selling the next challenger to the Ouroborus' title of 'ultimate' rebreather?

Look forward to our next outing with us all diving in silence

Neil

[narked at 90]

hi zepp here's a few pictures of your insides!
john


www.narkedat90.co.uk

[MAD]

And there I was... bimbling along and below me I saw Zepp... couldn't resist pointing the video his direction...

There's about 40 seconds of video... it's a file of about 3 meg... so you might want to only view it if you have broadband... Not really had a chance to tidy it up.

Quality OK... usual Stoney soup.

Jason bud, really impressed with the IDA conversion... looking good... time for a real dive perhaps?

Catch ya later.

(If you want a bit of full quality video on a disk... let me know)

Mark

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A couple of people are having trouble with the video... Just click on the photo and it should open windows media player... it's a WMV9 file so you'll need a recent version. If you still have probs, right click and "save target as" to your disk.

If people still have probs then I'll re-encode it tomorrow.

Cheers,

Mark

[Depth-junkie]

Well done lads, and most of all well done zepp.
congrats on your homebuild & keep up the good work.

ATB
Gareth

[zepp]

Originally Posted by narked at 90

hi zepp here's a few pictures of your insides!

I hope it wasn't THAT bad a leak that I expoded!!!!

[Silent]

Originally Posted by zepp

I hope it wasn't THAT bad a leak that I expoded!!!!

Funny you you should say that Zepp, I was going to mention that if yer insides look like that I think you've got a bit too much iron in ya diet & maybe a trip to the scrapyard (or casualty) would be in order to lighten the load .

By the way Mark, nice bit of video.
I did wonder at one point who it was pointing a lense at me .

[Mike_Eitel]

Yes it is a good feeling when it worked well at the first dive !!

Have fun