| Training under TOM... REVELATIONS...UPDATES...and the O2ptima Class with Tom Mount
Your ill mannered idiot author has begun the road to salvation. Ok so maybe it isn't that evangelical but something divine had better intervene!
I mean arriving in Miami after a total 18 hour trip was a story in and of itself. Ok so I was flying business on British from Lebanon...but screaming kids, the beginnings of a cold and the lack of water only begun what appeared to be the road to deliverance. But delivered to what?
I and "the chief" arrived at the Best Western with its nonfunctional internet, scratchy phone, and interesting clientele the night before class began. Sleep had left us in the lurch. In Lebanon the time was 0700 not the 0000 in Miami
After sleeping until 500 (I think it was the excitement and the jetlag working in synergy) I woke up and prepped for our trip to castle Mount. We met Patti on the lawn and were notified about a new book coming out that needs "tons of work" after a publishing snafu.
We were greeted by 3 MASSIVE ROTTWEILERS (who are absolute dears) and "the man" TOM MOUNT. Wow!
Class began in a pleasantly informal style with introductions and histories all around.
We jumped in to the history of rebreathers in the first section of the lecture . Which is about as far as we got in the slide show. In our discussions we covered issues of oxygen toxicity, myopia, errors divers had made and things to keep an eye on.
Lamar Hires showed up which meant a break and... CHRISTMAS. There she was.. My O2PTIMA.. in her big black carry case. The Hires had outfitted us with the Nomad and transpacs for the kit.
Building the Rebreathers filled the rest of the day.
I screwed up and had to unbolt and rebolt the system several times. I hope it all finally sinks in...
I began by proudly hooking up the regs to the bottles and hoses to the counter lungs...
Um, your bottles are in the wrong place...
Strip the unit and start over
Oops what about the sensors... GULP undo EVERYTHING and start again!
The first issue at hand was finding the tools to strip the unit. FOR THOSE GOING INTO THIS BRING YOUR TOOLS... One Phillips head, a pair of needle nose pliers, scissors, and TWO adjustable crescent wrenches!!!
Hooking up the solenoid takes some doing as the rubber caps must fit tightly on the connectors and there is very little clearance to plug the sensor cable into the housing.
The routing of the hoses through the back of the O2ptima was my next mistake. I had to strip the bottles off and shove the hoses through the gap in the top. With the accompanying.. STRIP THE UNIT APART AND START OVER
Then came the you forgot the installation of an O2 cutoff for the solenoid resulted in....and yes you got it.. back to square one with the unit.
Ok FINALLY GOOD TO GO?
WRONG
What about the BC?
Of course STRIP THE UNIT and START OVER!
Time was up and we were told to take the units home to play and figure then out.
Me being a constant tinkerer... I decided to try out the position and routing of the cables..
This meant..
I changed the side of the HUD so that the cable wouldn't have to run too far... The connection is far too loose for the HUD and I was hoping someone would help me figure out how to bolt it down a bit better to the mouthpiece.
Trying to grab a little idea of how the thing worked with gas flowing through it. Trying to play with the idea of shutting off the bottles and individual outputs of the first stage. And breathing on a missing canister. WEIRD FEELING I MUST TELL YOU! I figured it was time to stop that little exercise when my Irises blew up to epic proportions!
Review the manual came next. The pictures are FAR TOO DARK to pick out much and really need a bit better background.. Maybe blue or green like they use for medical shots.
Expect many edits as I update this day to day. |