NDAC Today

[ajones]

Well finally got into the water and had a day bimbling around NDAC with my brother. It was a fairly late start as the wife beater was abused last night This is the first time for me at NDAC and suppose we did the usual first dive consisted of the 2 plans and knome garden the second we did the heilcopter and followed the road around up to 6m taking in all the sites and swimming through the pipes.

However today was the first outing of my new Halcyon Evolve wing. After various bits of advice I opted for the 40lbs wing as I dive twin 12s. What a difference from my oversized, dual 94lbs oms wing. I was far more comfortable in the water and I could actually feel for the isolator valve with my head rather than feeling just material in my previous wing. Also when fully inflated this wing comes no where near touching my valves where as the previous wing sat quiet high and would touch the valves even without being fully inflated.

I can still manage to do shutdowns with my wing so I think a big thank you to Rich W who set my 1 piece harness up on Wednesday when I bought my wing from him. This is my first 1 piece harness and I had my doubts about it and was prepared to cut the webbing to put a break in it. However I think because it is correctly fitted I had no issues getting in or out of it at all, in fact it is less faff than my previous system harness. I am now just going to leave as is.

My other new purchase is an apeks quantum. This is some what more conservative than my sunnto vyper as my quantum entered into deco whilst I still had 4 mins of NDL on my sunnto. There are couple of annoying things about the quantum in that the dive time is nolonger shown on the screen when it enters deco mode, I sure there is a button to correct this but that will involve reading the manual , and it doesnt seem to update the depth as regularly as the sunnto. As I was ascending from 17m I was coming up about 8m per minute which the sunnto tracked however the apeks seemed to lag behind and then catch up which then caused it to scream at me advising that I was coming up too fast.

However all in all I am very happy with my new purchases and it was all in all a good day out.

Cheers

Jonsey

[JasonP]

Originally Posted by ajones

My other new purchase is an apeks quantum. This is some what more conservative than my sunnto vyper as my quantum entered into deco whilst I still had 4 mins of NDL on my sunnto.

It isn't more conservative. It's different which you'd expect from a different algorithm. On dives in the 25ish metre region, it will probably go into deco before a Suunto. On deeper dives, it won't. However, once in deco, it doesn't seem to clock it up as fast initially. So if the Suunto's got 10 mins, you've probably got less on the Apeks. Plus it won't add extra stops on like a Suunto does if you come up slower than it's expecting. It probably won't knock any off though.

I've dived for 2 years with someone with a Vyper/Vytec. I've always got less stops. And the Quantum gives you far more benefit for accelerated deco than a Vytec.

Originally Posted by ajones

There are couple of annoying things about the quantum in that the dive time is nolonger shown on the screen when it enters deco mode, I sure there is a button to correct this but that will involve reading the manual , and it doesnt seem to update the depth as regularly as the sunnto. As I was ascending from 17m I was coming up about 8m per minute which the sunnto tracked however the apeks seemed to lag behind and then catch up which then caused it to scream at me advising that I was coming up too fast.

Once in deco mode you have to press the button to look at the alternate screen for the dive time. Depending on what depth you're at, 8m/min is too fast for the Apeks though the ascent rate meter is a bit slow and lags a bit so it starts beeping when you're not actually moving. I found buying a new hood solved the problem. I can't hear it beeping anymore

Jason

[RichW]

That's great news, I'm glad it all worked well for you!

Rich

[paramedic paul]

Originally Posted by JasonP

I found buying a new hood solved the problem. I can't hear it beeping anymore

Nice one