Abbo

Thanks chief: I'm still alive. The source of the O2 was Nippon Sanso: a top supplier of ultra high-purity gases to the semiconductor industry. It was medical grade 87799 oxygen guaranteed a minimum of 99.5% O2 by volume. I took the spec sheets back with me. It may not pass as many times through the fractional distillation process as semiconductor gases, but my belief is the purity is far higher than 99.5%. The O2 bank and booster were in a seperate room from the other pumps, so I took the only risk of inpurities to be a deliberate decision by the operator to kill me! It was frustrating not to be able to independently verify the purity, but I took a decision that diving on it was an acceptable risk - once - especially after carting 40kg of gear out on my back to a remote site. I shan't depend on somebody else to remember the analyser again: I'm just on the Oxycheq website now looking for a cheap analyser. Always one more thing to buy...

I felt sorry last week for a couple of people on Rebreather World trying to get information about which rebreather to buy. The bumpy ride one got was perhaps largely self-inflicted but the point remains. Having not so long ago been through the same process I thought it would be nice for RBW to collate information to make the process easier. The suggestion, however, appears to have been met with a resounding silence, so I'll leave it at that. I fell on my feet with both the 'breather I bought and the instructor I chose, and I expect other people are able to fend for themselves too.