Inspiration advice

jholley

Hello everyone,
I am brand new to this forum and wanted to get some advice from those of you that have been diving rebreathers for some time now.
I am not new to diving but I am very new to rebreathers. I will be taking a class with the Inspiration later this summer.
I have several years experience diving, which includes technical and commercial diving as well as being a NAUI Instructor Trainer and a training specialist at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.
What I need are suggestions on what to look for and expect during the training and also where to find a reputable place to buy a rebreather. I live in Houston Texas.

Joe
http://www.underwaterul.com

Mark Chase

I cant quite get a grasp on what your after. As a result this might not be relevant.

However.

The course is all about learning how the unit works from a practical angle which is easy if your practical minded. I would expect like most people you will find buoyancy very unusual and this (to me) is by far the hardest thing to learn on CCR.

Down load the manual off the Internet and read it several times this will give you a big head start.

Trimming out the unit is difficult and I would recommend getting a big soft weight to go on top like a 3kg.

Most divers need 10KG to dive the unit at first.

Press your instructor into getting you weighted and trimmed out correctly before starting on skills in the lake section. This will help enormously.

Make sure your mask doesn't leak

Make sure you have a crack bottle SMB or mini CO2 Smb manual SMB's and CCR don't go well together

Keep at least 2m off the bottom so you can control buoyancy by fining up and finning down

HTH


ATB

Mark Chase

__________________
Is it supposed to make that noise ?

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jholley

That actually helped quite a bit.
What is different about buoyancy control?

Where would you suggest purchasing a rebreather from?

Okidiver

I too am a newbie to this bubbleless new world. I started diving in 1985. First and foremost, do your research (B4 you go to purchase a rebreather), this site is a great place. Go through the Library and the Forums. Hit the links folks post. Read the Bozanic book Mastering Rebreathers. There are some real pioneers on this site, so lurk away.

Rick

diverrob

The buoyancy is different because you are breathing into and out of a bag. With OC as you breath in you displace more H2O and therefore become more buoyant and as you exhale you displace less and become more negative. In a Rebreather the amount of H2O you displace does not change with every breath so your buoyancy stays the same. In fact it is easier to attain neutral buoyancy with a RB because of this fact.

01RMB

The trouble with bouyancy with a Rebreather is not so much it doesn't change when you breath in and out but rather that it changes as you go up or down. In the beginning you may end up dumping a lot of gas and adding a lot of gas as you change depth - particularly when shallow. On OC you can alter your bouyancy a lot through breathing control - on a RB you don't have that luxury.

__________________
Cheers
Rod

dan@scuba-training.net

If it takes you more than 30 minutes to get your buoyancy figured out, I will take your NAUI card, your birthday, shave your head and send you back to the grunts.

(Joe is an associate of mine, fellow former Marine, and an excellent diver.)

(He will NOT be making his first CCR dive with 10kg of extra lead, either!)

MarkZ

If you are looking to purchase one the safest place is to go directly to Silent Diving Systems who are the sole distrubutors of Inspiration and Evolution in North America. Talk with Mike Fowler who is now the president and owner after his partner passed late last year due to a sudden illness. Mike can be reached at 610-345-6382. You can also check out their website and get an idea of the costs for the various configurations. Mike is a good man, very down to earth and easy to talk to.

RebreatherDave

All great advice.....bouyancy is a pain especially for us videographers.....we can't use lung inhalation levels to minutely adjust bouyancy without resorting to using hands to inflate/deflate.

Jeff Bozanic's book is excellent, and reading the Inspo manual beforehand is the ticket.

Silent Diving Systems will hook you up with a qualified trainer.

Mark Chase

I should have said "with a dry suit and thinsulate / weasel. With a wet suit you wont need that much but I was assuming the water temp would be similar to UK in North America?

When i first dived the CCR i couldn't believe just how much I had previously used lung capacity to control my diving. I like to think I was pretty good at buoyancy control on OC but in some ways it just made things worse because I instinctively tried to use breathing to do everything.

See a bolder in front of you, breath in to go up and over the bolder, then head butt bolder because you don't go up AT ALL Thats pretty much my recollection of early CCR diving.


Also there is this thing called minimum loop. This is keeping the volume of gas in the counter lungs at fractionally above what you need for a breath. It takes a while to get used to keeping the volume down to this level. Once you do then it has the same advantages as being correctly weighted in that there is less volume of gas to move you around during ascent.


The Manual is available here.

http://www.apdiving.com/downloads/manuals/

Have fun


ATB

Mark Chase

__________________
Is it supposed to make that noise ?

I took my unit to the dive shop and demanded they bolt on every thing that would fit.

Join my elite diving teem and get a Tshirt

"Doing It Chasey"Hammerhead Eccr Advanced Diving System