How are the rebreather guys doing?

[ccuda]

Not enough action here lately... Come on! Tell us your stories, share some profiles - hearing about how darn cool those rebreathers are makes us want more and more! Bring it!

Okay, need a little controversy? The Prizm rocks over the Turtle! :o

Did I just say that? ;D

Come on guys!

You are the future! Let's hear how you are doing!

ccuda

[Inspirationdiver]

I just got back from a great weekend of diving at Wazee. Conditions were great, we had a good 50 ft of vis at depth. I made 4 dives, all on trimix, depths of 210, 160, 100, and 100. All of the dives were at least an hour in the water. My 20 cu ft bottle of trimix in the rebreather still had enough gas to make one more good dive, and I still had enough O2 in my oxygen cylinder to do the same. All of this was also done on one scrubber fill. Just think, no tank swapping, gear switching, or messing around with your rig all weekend and look at the range of depths for the dives.
I sure love my rebreather

[john j]

I just wanted to reiterate what was stated in the previous post.....4+ hours of diving to depths of 210ft and he used less than 30 cubic feet of gas total and had optimized PO2 at every point during the dives. No fills required between dives, no switching of tanks, etc. These rebreathers are really powerful tools.

[ghosch]

Just got my Inspiration certification (and my Inspiration) about two weeks ago (I was diving a Dolphin prior to that). Hope to see you guys out diving sometime soon!

[ccuda]

ghosch, Can you tell us who you received your training through? (My guess is GUDC) They seem to have a good technical program there, can you tell us more details of your certification experience?
What was your past training experience, what levels have you achieved?
What were the pre-requisites to you taking the Inspiration Cetification Course?
What made you choose the Turtle over the other CCR's that are available?
Have any money left over?
What have/did you do with your Dolphin? Was there a trade-in program?
And all those 95's for dust collection now?

If any and all you CCR divers out there would also be willing to share your similiar training, pre-requisite, and enrollment experiences, that would be great!

[ghosch]

Received the training through GUDC, Ron Benson. Training was a great experience, three nights classroom/pool, and about 8 hours of open water. Three students in the class. Of the eleven dives we did, I think we only let the electronics function on two, all the rest were manual control drills.

Prereq's were advanced nitrox and deco. Personally I had various specialties, and SCR rebreather certification (though it is not required).

I got into rebreathers last year (semi-closed), and found that although I loved diving the Dolphin, the 132' max depth (if diving it by the manual) was a little limiting. I sold the Dolphin to a friend who will be getting certified on it in a couple of weeks. I hated to sell it, but it helped finance the Turtle.

Picked the Inspiration for a couple of reasons. Local support and training, good availability of parts, large dive community, and a well thought out design. There are plenty of other good units on the market, but very few with a large number of units in use. Cutting edge as opposed to bleeding edge kind of thing.

I still use the 95's to fill my bottle on my lift bag, I think I can get around 3400 fills. Oh yeah, and I have one of those adapters to inflate car tires. Actually, my wife dives OC, so I still have a use for them.

[john j]

As far as my training goes...

I trained all the way through advanced trimix on open circuit because rebreathers were not affordable or routinely available back then.

Then I got certified on the Dolphin SCR. I feel the same way as GHOSH on this. Liked the unit but very depth limited. After 2 years with the Dolphin, the Inspiration became available and I went for it and now I'm certified through trimix on that.

My open circuit experience was and still is extremely valuable to me and I wouldn't trade it for anything. If I was just getting into it now though, I would go straight to a CCR of course, but I don't regret the time and gobs of cash I spent on open circuit. I consider it paying my dues and every time I do a dive with my CCR I can appreciate it more becasue I went through all that crap with doubles and truckloads of tanks, long deco times, spending $100 in gases on a single dive, carrying more equipment than my own body weight up the hill at Wazee. Now, I can strap on my CCR and as long as I choose my diluent gas and bailout correctly, I can decide on the fly to go to 20 feet or 400 feet and my PO2 is always optimized. When I dive at Wazee for example, I use bottom mix and bailout appropriate for the very bottom of the lake and I can go there or any depth shallower than that and still have optimized PO2 throughout the dive. I can decide on the spot how deep I want to go and I don't have to change any gases or get refills between dives. You just can't do that on open circuit! My CCR has opened a world of diving opportunity to me that simply did not exist before.