Rg-uf/m

voets

Anyone diving the East-German RG-UF/M
It looks like a nice toy to play around with. What should be done to get it in a diving condition?

db8us

Replace the scrubbers-tack with a refillable one.
I have such a breather, used it a few times in a pool and it is back in the old corner.
It just breathes tooooo shitty

Marc T

You have special parts for RG-UF/M on this website
Tauchen - Cave, Nitrox, Rebreather Ausbildung, Tec Ausrüstung, Reisen

seppu

the rg-uf/m is not so shitty.same like a Rebreather 80.good for vorbidden dives.
gruss sepp
from the yellow side of the force

Yankee Rebel

ive got one, and i kind of like it.
depending on where you live you may need a fill adapter for the bottle.
the refillable scrubber you can buy or make one pretty easy.
larger diameter hoses help, and a DSV is nice as well.
some people complain the counterlung is too small, but it is what it is. they can be enlarged if you want to do the work.
an o2 booster pump might be nice if you cant get 200bar O2 fills, but 150bar fills work just fine.
if i ever find another one thats affordable, id grab it or two or three. i just like them though.
buying all the extras to make the RGU better really adds on the cost, and defeats the purpose of them for me. an affordable, O2 rig thats fun to dive. it might not be ideal, its definatly not a LAR or a C96, but still a fun little toy. 60-90Euro's for a refillable scrubber, same for them to modify the mouthpeice into a DSV, i forget what larger hoses cost, but lets say another $100USD.... thats $180Euro's+$100USD+the cost of the rig... pretty soon youve got quite an expensive O2 rig that was bought because of its affordability.
now on the other hand.. if you wanted to do the work yourself, modify a standard scrubber to be refillable, and have a local machinist machine a peice of nylon roundstock, add o-ring grooves to seal it, slot the mouthpeice for a bolt, and you might be able to have a reasonably priced DSV that looks like a Draeger's DSV. the bitepeice will likely have to be changed as well though, its quite large and might gag you. i forget whos regulator bitepeices work on these... that or a simple ballvalve DSV. its hard to escape the cost of larger ID hoses though if you want them. the counterlung if you want, a standard horse collar BC has been used by many, including probly the most well known, Tom Rose. even then though unless youre on the scrounge, its hard to escape the costs that add up to improve the RGU. my own opinion and feelings, find a buddy that has one, someoen from the forum even thatll let you do a test dive, if you can live with it the way it is, then buy one planning on diving it as it is and making due with it. otherwise you might as well save your money, buy a used Dolphin, plug off the constant flow oriface and dive it as a demand O2 rig and have the same thing for likely a comprable price.

Tom Roses site:
Homebuilt Stuff for My Rebreather Project

Draeger Dolphin turned O2CCR page on another site:
TacticalDiving.com: content / oxygen ccr from scr (**)

hope this helps somehow,
Yankee Rebel

GKAM

The RG-UF/M is an interesting platform to start experimenting with. If you are not built like the Governator, you can dive it unfer reasonable workloads.

Very compact, ideal for long shallow dives, or to be used as a donor rig. The CMF valve though is not for deep use.

I have played with these things quite extensively and they are easy to modify and rebuild without any special tools.

GKAM's Rebreather Pages
GKAM's Rebreather Pages



I have a couple for sale if you are interested.

/George

__________________
Stay #

jaap

If you have not already bought one, may I suggest another very cheap, small, robust and almost 100% ready Rebreather for rudimentary O2-dives? The IDA-76, can be found cheap. Like this one: eBay: Russischer Rebreather IDA76 (Artikel 270026598178 endet 17.09.06 21:00:00 MESZ)

They have been selling at ebay for around 200$ lately.

Only things needed are to put a normal mouthpice on the DSV and get an adapter to fill the minicylinders (R1/4" female to whatever you use). Or to plug in some other sort of O2-source on the ADV. Or simply add a bypass, suitvalve to add gas.

Attached Images

IDA76.jpg (29.4 KB, 205 views)

voets

Thanks for all the replies. I saw one for sale on a dutch site. And it sure looks like fun to dive an oxygen rebreather. But I don't want to go overboard on spending hundreds of euro's getting it ready to dive.

Skipbreather

Hi voets-

I've spent a *LOT* of time working w/ several RGUs and their parts.

I first bought them as donor rigs for the O2 side of another Rebreather. In that configuration I found that the reg when tweaked to the absolute max quits flowing altogether at around 140 ft/ 45 m. I moved on to other rigs but last winter I did a major revisit to the rig to get one up to speed for some shore dives during some layovers in Hawaii. All the parts came from various junk boxes in the basement so out of pocket cost was zero.

What had to happen: Built a refillable scrubber out of 2 standard scrubbers. Had to machine a couple of small brass parts and steal a brass threaded rod from a toilet repair kit. In pool testing it worked fine for over an hour w/ Grace 6-12.

Hadto replace stock bottle w/ a 4 cu ft Med O2 bottle that was DOT approved so shop on Maui could legaly fill it. Used a valve off of a BP60 bottle- had the same thread. I then converted the reg to a CGA 870 (medical pin index O2 fitting) yoke. I custom machined a conversion part that would mate the yoke to the reg and also give me a port for a pressure gauge. Added hose/ pressure gauge. Carefully done it all still fits inside the cheesy plastic box.

The counterlung sat too low for me- I'm a tall guy- so I moved it up one set of screws on the back. Helped a lot. As far as CL size goes, I got along w/ it fine and I've got large lungs. Outside the rig, I replaced the strap w/ a webbing one w/ plastic buckle. I replaced the hoses w/ some spare MK15 hoses I had left over, and used one of my old prototype custom "real" DSV's. Also had to replace the short hose that connects rig to CL w/ a longer, bigger one. Hoses took a fair bit of shimming to fit the *miniscule* inputs of the rig.

All said and done and pool tested, took rig to warm tropical water and did several dives on several occasions. I swims great, but you'd better have lungs that can suck start a Harly Davidson if you dive one of these. At anything other than very low workload, the WOB is outta sight due to numerous small restrictions in the system. Also, found out just how easy the scrubber was to overbreath when I went chasing a few rays. MAJOR CO2 hit!

Was it worth the trouble? I enjoy designing & building stuff so that part was fun. All the bits came from stuff on hand. If I'd had to buy it all I'd have been disappointed, but I got to dive a rig that built myself that would fit in my dive bag and could be carried on board on a trip. The Achillie's heel is the WOB & wimpy scrubber.

I'm on the road right now, but if someone wants pictures, let me know- they're on the desktop at home.

Ken

voets

The tip on the Russian rebreathers made me doubting again (plus that the seller of the RG-UF/M is totally unresponsive). If you could choose between the east german one, or one of the russian breatrhers. What would it be?
It's just for fun & toying, to dive an oxygen rebreather, so forget about those nice IDA-71 etc..