rdmmdr

Shallow water rebreather diving, while in most cases is overkill, allows us to stay current on our skills. And i like the added safety factor while diving in the kelp. Too many oc guys have died from entanglement issues. So to say that we should not be diving them unless we have to just does not fly. I am still on the fence for traveling with them unless you are going to a tech dive spot that will allow the deep or long dive that would make the travel hassle worth it. Cattle boats out of Maui just don"t seem to worth the excess baggage. But at home, dive it , practice your skills. Fly it manually, do intensional scr bailout. plan for the last ten minutes of the dive for skills. You can't say you don't have the time, use it productively. besides the smb's and reels get lonely if you don't play with them.

Ask the soldiers that fought in Desert Storm, The training at National Training Center, Fort Irwin was much tougher then the Iraqis. Our responses to any emergency should be automatic, muscle memory. Your hands should be moving before your conciseness catches up. The first basic steps in any emergency, should be an automatic response. As any good pilot single engine piston pilot will tell you, the second the rpm starts to drop, thye don't ask why, their hands are already moving, carb heat on, mixture full rich and tank valve check. Then we look to what else it could be. Figure out what has happened after you have secured the loop.

PS the only thing the prop is good for on an airplane is to keep the pilot cool, watch him sweat if it stops.

If you have a high po2 warning from your hud, don't grap for the handsets and try to figure out who is lying to you. secure the o2 valve and dil flush the loop. You know that you can breath it. Then and only then, stop to look at the handsets and figure out what has happened. If you keep practicing these skills, then when it come time to use them, we will get to read the story not the obit.

rick