abowie

The more I think about this thread the more convinced I am becoming that the central issue about safety here is about AWARENESS of what the unit is doing, and the nature of the machine itself is secondary.

If you train on an eCCR and trust it to do its job while paying only cursory attention to what's going on you'll get into trouble if it fails. Sure they start out by teaching you to fly manually, but why would you do that unless you were some sort of hyper vigilant safety freak like, oh I don't know, a test pilot or an anaesthetist? So if you let the machine do what you paid for it to do....

If you train on a mCCR you HAVE to watch what's going on because there's really no other way to dive the unit. So unless you get distracted or you can't monitor the displays you should be alright. There is no question in my mind that there will be situations with an mCCR where you die of hypoxia when an eCCR would have kept you alive. The gross available statistics we have to work with so far seem to suggest that this is a relatively unlikely event however.

Other cues apart from handsets, like an HUD, listening to the solenoid or in my case the KISS valve hissing are terribly important. In theatre I will notice if the patient's heart rate changes by more than a couple of beats per minute, no matter how otherwise distracted I am. Tens of thousands of hours of practise at monitoring get you used to the subtle cues.

So essentially I'm changing my mind mid thread and looking more at what you do rather than what you've got. Mind you, I'll still be getting another mCCR.

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Andrew Bowie

Rebreather-friendly Buddy