The 'Switching to a Rebreather' Debate.

[steve-k]

<font color='#000080'>it was deep down diving

for the kiss training

[Rob Evans]

The official going rate for an Inspiration is £3850, add £175 for an ADV - money well spent. However, there are deals to be had - Chasey's reply a page or so ago sums it up.

Yes you can do Trimix CCR without doing the OC course, exactly what I did. If you've already got OC Trimix, there are deals to be had....  There's not a lot of difference between the two courses.

As for bailout - for 35m non-deco dives you're realistically looking at an extra 3l tin. You can get to the surface from 30m on the on-board diluent in calm, unstressed conditions; if you're in the sort of situation that you HAVE to bail out to OC your breathing rate will be pretty heavy so it's best to have something extra to get you out of dodge (yes Finless I know, capital D. Arseholes to you too)

Generally speaking a 7l sling covers most bases. It sounds a bit shocking to have to cart all that around when the idea of an RB is to reduce the bottle count, but that's the way it is.  You cover yourself for the worst case scenario ie total loop flood at the end of the dive.  For what it's worth, my 7l still has the same fill I put in it a year ago. After a while you don't even know it's there.
For much deeper/longer dives a whole lot of other factors come into play in terms of planning, such as sharing bailout between the buddy pair, SCR if at all possible or going the rock'ard Alpinist route (not me thanks).  The nature of the beast means you've got more flexibility to do what suits you best.
There are an enormous amount of variables involved when you go 45+, as such there are no hard and fast rules. Personal choice and intelligent dive planning are key..

£500 seems to be the going rate for all basic CCR courses regardless of machine. You'll want to factor in boat fees, gas (about a tenner then), lime etc on top of that. Think in terms of around £625.

[steve-k]

<font color='#000080'>adv??

gessing at auto dilutant valve, but i just dont know

[Rob Evans]

Got it in one. &nbsp;Basically a very detuned reg that's neatly plumbed into the loop on the inhale side. &nbsp;Stops all that messing about pressing the diluent button on the way down.

[steve-k]

<font color='#000080'>the drager has them built in as standard, but you have to have a low volume in the loop befour it kicks in, suppose its a balance between your breathing resistance activating it and loop depletion, &nbsp;how low (tight) do you feel the loop get on descent? befout it kicks in


was doing a 50m dive, but it got blown off so we did a 35-40m as a substitute, 2 of the lads on the boat where gas diving and renaged on the 40m dive because they didnt want to waist there gas (twin 12s trimix &amp; 2 7ltr travle and 80deco)
on the inspiration its a few quid to add the helum to the dilutant, does this make a significant diferance in the attitude towards what dives become worthy of doing it on gas?, as i know of a couple who will only dive gas below 50m. because of the cost, just a thaught

[nitrox]

<font color='#0000FF'>hi gang,

as for prices of second hand inspirations, i saw one recently in the classifieds of DIVE (i think it was) and it was going for 2.2k after 30 dives worth of use but needed shipping from, sweden.
although i agree that most go for 3k ish there are cheaper ones about if you look around.
i recently spoke to a guy advertising his and he wanted 2.5k so it can be done.

as for the 8-9 hour cis lunar/maxi meg scrubber i am also led to believe that they are about as hard to obtain as the popes hat in rangers blue.

after all the recent 2ing and frowing about certain units, isnt it a little strange that APD have only just caught on to something that &quot;doctor dragers evil invention&quot; has had for quite some time?.....what say you mr Evans??

going a little off track here, but!

has anyone seen the recent Apeks marine catalogue?

if not check out the back pages &quot;the military section&quot;
not only can you now get a full face mask purpose built for doc D's evil invention thats just as rediculously huge as the effort by oceanic featured in this months DIVER.
you can also aquire (although god knows why you would want to) technical gun metal greyish anti magnetic first stages.

why?? i ask you!

i cant wait to see the first compressor that produces anti acoustic off board bailout gas  

or the guarranteed to 30m anti reflective/glare commando dagger for all those days at devils point when your chasing spetnaz agents around drake island.

thing is though, puppets actually buy this guff.
i ordered the knife yesterday, its gonna sit quite happily under my matress as redundancy in case of a gas stoppage on the sig.

 
 

regards

mark

[Mr T.]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (nitrox @ July 29 2003,19:00)]they are about as hard to obtain as the popes hat in rangers blue.

Top draw dude.

You and I may ruck occasionally, but lines like this keep the smiles flowing.

[Rob Evans]

Probably about time me and you retracted the daggers Mr Nitrox - we'll never agree, but that's the spice of life.
Yes the Drager has had an ADV since the word go (cos I do know how it works   ) - then again it wouldn't work at all without one, no dil button    

The Inspiration's works in much the same way as the Drager(can't speak for Bob the Builder's ADV- never tried it) - when the lungs are completely collapsed you give it a good hard tug  - much harder than OC, the reg's been seriously de-tuned cos the absolute last thing you want on an RB is a freeflow on the loop - but it's not a big deal. This way you keep minimum loop volume all the way to the bottom.  This is a Good Thing.

Totally can't see the point of this non-magnetic stuff for dive gear, but if that's what people will pay for.....SUCKERS! Actually thinking about it, those lobbies out there are getting smarter every day. Maybe if I replace my skanky old knife with a dead expensive graphite one I'll actually catch one. Where's me wallet.

Steve - spookily enough I've got the exact same scenario you're talking about this weekend.  A 42m dive on Sat, followed by a 60m on Sun.  The Saturday dive doesn't really warrant any mix, but I've filled the diluent bottle with 10/52 anyway ready for the Sunday. Strong mix, but a doddle to blend. The amount I'll use on Saturday is so tiny it'd be incredibly tight arsed to mess about with air for the Sat and re-fill for Sun.  We're talking about a quid's worth of Helium at the very most, for each dive.

[nitrox]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Rob Evans @ July 29 2003,23:00)]&quot;Probably about time me and you retracted the daggers Mr Nitrox - we'll never agree, but that's the spice of life.&quot;

<font color='#0000FF'>shouldnt that read you and i ?

anyway, daggers have fixed blades and are therfore unretractable. &nbsp;

regards

nitrox

nulli secundum
&nbsp;

[Mr T.]

*bump*