COPIS vs APECS

netmage

Pretty much had my mind made up to go down the COPIS route, then I spend a few hours w/ Padipro and Mempilot tearing through their rigs and drinking a few beers and now find myself considering APECS...

I'm one of those people who find alot of the DIR philosophy works for my diving; streamlining, simplicity, reduced failure points, team, situational awareness, etc... For purposes of this discussion, we'll leave it at that...

In my (albiet limited) reading, up until maybe the past 12-18 months, the notion of 'flying manually' with eCCR units has been largely unmentioned. Is this an oversight on my part; or has this been engrained into the mindset/curriculum since day 1....? How about in practice...?

Real or not, I have this perception of manual being a safer design. I'm admit, some of this is derived from the fatality statistics; which may not be an appropriate comparison as MANY other factors contribute to incidents.

So we started talking about the different failure modes and components that could fail and differences in recovery between the different units and I started to see additional safety value in having the electronics... Both require the same diligent awareness, both could fail closed. Other than the # of handsets, I suppose the fundemental failure diff is the solenoid could fail open; appropriate setpoint management determines your response time window.

Would appreciate comments to help me navigate the decision...

-Tim

tibby

I've considered both megs before I bought mine and yes it would be simpler and cheaper to go COPIS but I didn't see the safer part. I, as others, control my APECS manually all of the time and it's not that big of a hassle. I'll let the solenoid take over if I'm not "available" so to speak. I bought the APECS because I want that solenoid to be there for me if I, for some reason, am not able to respond. If you look at the "almost accident" thread you'll see a few entries like: "I got tunnel vision and almost passed out while putting my fins on because I forgot to push the button on my CK" type of incidents. I don't like that scenario.
As far as the solenoid going bad closed or open, I decided to mitigate that with good preventive maintenance. If you're not afraid to do your own Rebreather maintenace it shouldn't be a problem.
I have to tell you though that I am new at this and my opinion may not be the right way to go.
I think soon (hopefully) someone will come up with a combination solenoid/leaky valve (like a needle valve controller) that will let you fly manually and have a real safety net controller and have it available for the Meg as well as other RBs.
Good luck,
Tibby

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Does the voice of reason change when you add helium to the mix?...hmm

decoweenie

Those philosophy exist before DIR was even Hogarthian, but we'll leave that alone...

From what I have seen, most people doing that are new Rebreather divers (with perhaps a few exceptions) who still fear the unknown.

Without going into a big debate, but drawing my personal experience as someone with more mCCR hours than eCCR hours and now back to diving eCCR as eCCR, this is all I could recommend...

"No need to dive eCCR manually with SP as parachute, just monitor the PO2 as if you are diving an mCCR!"

It was said before, but I don't think a lot of people quite understood how simple it supposed to be...

Mark Chase

I dived a Classic and a Hammer Head for a three years then switched this year to a KISS MCCR.

I dont believe for one second that a MCCR is as safe as a properly monitored ECCR.

Flying a ECCR manually is good practice in case you need to but I see it as a pointless exercise. Just let it do its think and monitor it.

I have flown an ECCR manually for a couple of hours on one dive (because my HH broke) and i can confirm its a fair amount of work but easily doable. It just distracts from the dive.

MCCR is much easier to fly because your only toping up the 02 not injecting all of it.

If you want an MCCR buy one.

I bought one because i was fed up with the electronics breaking on ECCRs. No other reason.

ATB

Mark

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Marin

I have been trying to make the same decision as netmage but I see the answer as being much more simplistic.

As human beings we are always striving to make things easier and more comfortable for ourselves. Once we become comfortable and happy with our own abilities and those of the machines/tools that we operate we tend to relax in the knowledge that everything is fine. This is when we take our eye off the ball. It can happen at work, on the sportsfield, on the road...if it happens in an environment where we need mechanical intervention to merely survive, the outcome can be fatal.

Eccr's fly the machine and allow complacency in the total reliability of the unit, mccr's force you take control of your own actions on every dive.

It cannot be a coincidence that there have been no fatalities on mccr's?



(ok, now that I have lit the blue touchpaper I will retire to a safe distance! )

Nailer99

I'm not trying to start an argument, and I do understand your point, but....the fatality statistics don't seem to support this statement.

For the record, I start training on my COPIS in one week; I had decided early on to go with an mCCR, and was just trying to choose between the Classic Kiss and the COPIS when I got bit by the Meg bug. Now, 6 months after making my choice, and after having spent a lot of time talking with, and diving with different eCCR divers, I'm already thinking about ordering an APECS head before I get to the hypoxic Trimix.....

Anyway, it's my understanding that there are zero mCCR fatalities on record, so doesn't that make them, well, 100% safer than eCCRs, so far? (knock on wood)

wedivebc

A copis will force you away from complacency by requiring user interaction during the dive. A healthy fear of dying should have the same effect .

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Gill Envy

Tim, great post! You've done some good homework so far, IMHO. I can't compare the Apecs to the Copis but I can compare general eCCR experience with a Shearwater Copis. I got quite a few hours on an eCCR before asking the questions you ask, then I started taking a hard look at stats, then I asked a whole lot of questions about the effect of diving style on safety and listened to a variety of perspectives on rig design and it's effects on habits and ultimately safety, etc, etc. There is a debate as to weather the near zero fatality rate associated with mCCR's is reflective of them being "safer" or fewer in number or due to them being self selecting in terms of a more anal user group being attracted to them and using them less aggressively.

So, here's how it boiled down for me. I was very happy with my Evo, loved the vision, had nothing but good things to say...until my wifes solenoid failed on two major trips in a row. I don't believe this was reflective of poor quality on AP's part, very bad luck for sure, but more reflective of one of the many failure points on an eCCR in general and the dependency that all that technology encourages. It took alarms to bring it to my wife's attention, which was telling to me. Her ultimate reaction was to balk and demand that we try a new brand. Not being able to fix this problem in the field was devastating...both at the beginning of two ten day trips in remote locations.

Having given the mCCR vs eCCR debate a great deal of thinking by then I finally said "what the heck maybe we should give it a try...maybe cooler, fancier and more complex isn’t always better?" The only experience I had had on an mCCR was on a KISS CL and Sport in a swimming pool, and at that time I had been wooed so much by the latest and greatest technology in eCCR's and I was just not impressed with the build quality of the KISS. By the time we got a 100 hours of eCCR experience under our belt and started thinking about switching brands, the Copis, the Pelagian and the rEVO came out. The build quality of the meg with the simplicity and field serviciability of an mCCR all wrapped up in one won me over...and the options for wiring in ones choice of several third party set of electronics was impressive, standard threading and multiple ports in the copis head make it very versitile. If I wanted to change electronics down the line, even upgrade to apex 3 all the options were there. After getting first hand experience with a solenoide coil failing and then working again and then failing many months later at the worst possible time, modularity in electronics got bumped up high on the priority list...give me something I can swap out in the field, without having to spend an extra 6K on a spare head. I don't want to work on the motherboard or anything that technical, just make it relatively easy to unplug and replace the offending widget and i'm happy. The electronics in mCCR's are much simpler, less integrated and much easier to replace…I would not say cheaper, with the redundancy I chose it’s come out about even. My number one priority is to keep diving on a trip, and to keep doing it safely. I began to realize that safety and convenience were actually aligning quite nicely in a variety of ways.

There also seemed to be creedence in the argument that the habits mCCR's engrained and the philosophy that it reinforced required/encouraged the diver to be more in tune with PO2, and thus "safer"...how injection rate changes throughout the dive profile, and ultimately the fact that there is no "safety net" forces you to stay on your toes, continuously! It made sense to me. The only argument I’ve heard for the necesity of an electronic controller that was hard to argue is for folks who do penetration dives and put themselves at risk of getting trapped and unable to get their hands to the injection button…a position you’re probably more likely to get yourself into if you have a “safety net” though.

The financial investement required to purchase two rebreathers required a lot of consideration for us, being faced with having to do that all over again was dually nerve racking. So after fixating on this debate for a while and boring a whole lot of people on this forum with incesent posts to this effect, we took the plunge to see what first hand experience would reveal. Sure, I could have decided to always run my eCCR manually, but not having a constant flow assist makes that a bit of a pain in the butt…I think Decoweenie said it best, if you are going to go eCCR, "No need to dive eCCR manually with SP as parachute, just monitor the PO2 as if you are diving an mCCR!" The question I pose is weather that is truly possible. It did seem like an odd philosophy to go for the fancy electronics, to not use them because you don't trust them and then ironically rely on them as a “safety net”. I think you’d be more likely to rely on them at just the wrong time. Paradoxically, the fact that you have a safety net may turn out to be one of the major deciding factors that fatally influences habit. Diving as if you’re life is at stake may just be the key, and it may take actually having your life at stake at all times to be adequately motivated. If you can adequately motivate yourself in that way on an eCCR then great, fore me there was one way to find out...purchase an mCCR and compare them.

I have been reluctant to post much on my experience until I got a bunch of hours on my shearwater copis, after all, my thinking on this matter took a humbling 180 degree turn in the previous 12 months, who knows where I’ll be a year from now. I’m not going to say I’ve made my ultimate conclusion, but so far I have found that all the talk about the difference in habit and how much more in tune an mCCR diver has to be with ones rig and ultimately with one's po2 to be absolutely true, at least for me. Yes, it does seem to turn out to be all about habit, but habit seems very guided by design. I was very in touch while diving eCCR but now on mCCR it's gotten to the point where it's continuous, and deeply engrained to the point where if I get anxious, and perception narrows, my habits of injection rate and system monitoring do not seem to waver at all, instead I become even more engaged if things get dodgy. The rhythm of little to no injection of o2 on decent, barely any injection when at a constant depth and frequent injection while ascending is etched into my habits, not reflexively but even better, it’s an active, conscious process. I’ve learned nuances to it that I never really had to notice diving on cruise control. (Perhaps all rebreathers should force one to start out learning in manual mode, and cruise control could be unlocked in Mod 2…just an idea.)

I decided before even purchasing the Copis that I wanted real-time po2 on all three cells in a fully independent monitoring system as provided by the Shearwater HUD, I wanted true redundancy. The HUD has become my primary since it's right in front of my eyes all the time and shows me the differences between cell reading instantly, po2 is my primary focus without the clutter of anything else. My main focus is on the one thing that counts the most. the handset has become my secondary, with po2 monitor combined with in line deco (the Apex doesn’t have that yet). While I occasionally check deco I also compare and contrast the cell readings with the handset, since they are not integrated I expect them to be a bit different…and the fact that they will always be a little different gives my mind something changing and interesting to compare. I got so bored monitoring my eCCR that I found myself habitually looking at the screen without thinking about what I was seeing.

For you, I’d ask if you really want the convenience of an eCCR, that's what its about, convenenience, at least with the vision, it's the closest thing to plug and play that i've seen. If so, then go for it, the fact that you are thinking about it so much just may be the key. I have many more hours to put on my mCCR before I’m going to make ultimate conclusions.

For what it’s worth, I hope that helps.

George

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Gill Envy

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Gill Envy

I'm remembering a reference to one mCCR fatality in an earlier thread, and the point was also made that the number of eCCR's currently far exceeds the number of mCCR's so the stats are probably not quire as glowing as they sound.

g

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Gill Envy

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PacketSniffer

I'm confused as to why many people don't understand the above statement.

@Tim - I can speak for the Meg training. Since the training quality tends to be a bit higher due to Leon's strict selection and less total number of instructors, his approach is disseminated somewhat efficiently. Meg divers are taught from training day number 1 to run manually. It is advised to run manually for some time after training until comfort is built with gauging the rise and fall of the PO2. From that point of comfort, run electric and monitor as usual (i.e., with vigilance).

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