Optima/Hammerhead Primary Handset Failure During Dive?

Yesterday I had an interesting thing happen to me while diving my Optima FX w/ Delrin Hammerhead Handsets, so I thought I'd post it and see if this was an isolated incident or if it's happened to others as well:

I was diving on the Wreck of the Ancient Mariner in approximately 70 feet of depth yesterday morning. There was minimal to no current and the visibily was probably in the area of 75'. At the time of this incident, I was kneeling in the sand and was taking pictures at the edge of the wreck, while my buddy, who was approximately 25 feet behind me in the sand was practicing some skills, because he had recently made some configuration changes to his setup.

After about 25 minutes of diving at a setpoint of 1.2, I looked at my primary handset, as I had done often throughout the dive, and noticed the screen was blank. I immediately looked over at my VR3 (4th Cell) and noticed my setpoint was just below 1.0 and dropping. I tried pushing the buttons and slightly knocking on the primary handset with my right hand, but no luck, it was dead. I immediatley increased my setpoint manually and turned to notify my buddy of the problem and started for the ascent line, which was only 50 feet from my current position. My buddy immediately understood the signal I gave him that the primary handset had failed and joined me at the ascent line. I ascended, maintaining my PO2 manually and monitoring it via my VR3 and HUD, completed a brief safety stop and exited the water.

The situation never escalated into a bigger problem, because I noticed it pretty early, and the training kicked in pretty smoothly, but that may have been different if I would have not looked at it when I did, which sometimes happens when I'm taking pictures.

Once onboard the boat, I removed my gear, I dried off the handset and fiddled with it a bit, but no luck. I took a backup battery from my tool kit, openned the battery compartment and replaced the battery with a new fresh Duracel and the handset activated up right away. Keep in mind, that the battery that was in the handset was a fresh battery that I had exchanged a couple of hours earlier that morning, as I do every morning before I go diving (At $0.50 a battery, it seems like a reasonable precaution). I then proceeded to take out my volt meter from my tool kit and measured the Duracel, which appeared to be just fine.

I recognize that the battery I removed from my handset could have still been week, even though the voltage appeared ok, but I was just curious if anyone else had experienced a similar problem with the Delrin Hammerhead Handsts before? I did not dive again, so I haven't used my unit since, but it looks ok, should I be concerned? Could it have been a poor contact? If it was the battery, should I not have recieved some sort of battery warning?

Mine are the Delrin handsets.
Fitted fresh batteries before the dive.
Batteries were still good after the dive.
I dived today, 75m, 45mins into the dive on the acsent my primary shut down. Fresh pants were required at the time . The secondry worked ok so I ran it manual and after 5 mins the primary came back on showing no stop . No battery warning or low battery showing.
When back on land after changing pants checked for any battery corrosion and there was none . I will no longer trust the HH

, should I be concerned? ?

Please don't take this as jumping to conclusions, but is this possibly what may have lead to Mike's problem on Saturday near Pompano?

Having worked in broadcast electronics over the years, I have truly come to not trust molex style connectors. After many missed top of the hour news casts on a radio network, All molex connectors in the cart playback machines were eliminated. Misfired newscasts went to near zero after that modification.

I had 3 failures with my oxy 2 last year and every time it was due to the 3 pin molex connector that connects the 2 o2 sensors to the circuit board. After the 3rd failure, the female molex connector got cut off and the leads soldered directly to the pins on the O2 sensors. Haven't had a problem of that nature since. It is scary to think what all in the world relies on this style of interconnection.

Electronic connections in the type of gear we are using is further troubled by the moist / salty environment we use it in.

As a non-engineer (is that a term? :-) the best way I can explain it is to document what occurred. John Jones, Kevin J., Mark Derrick & Tom M. can give a much more detailed explanation with a variety of arguments and counter-arguments :-)

At about 135 fsw/40 msw, my solenoids cut out. I was very new to RBs, probably dive 3 or 4, so I was a bit slow on the uptake here. The unit tested fine at the surface.

I was inside a wreck at the time. As I exited (changed body position, which we think had something to do with it) the solenoids suddenly rediscovered themselves, went off about 3x, & the CLs over-filled with O2. The PPO2 read 2.8. I ditched gas, went off the loop & whacked Tom on the fin. We bailed out of the dive (another instructor, Peter Sotis, was there so the other students could continue) & surfaced.

Everything was fine on check-out between dives & during the descent on dive 2 (about 70 fsw/20 msw) & all stayed good until I went into/out of standard tech swim configuration. Solenoids cut out, then went ballistic again. Another ditched dive.

From my understanding, either the battery lost connectivity and/or there was an electronics glitch. Many emails shot between Tom, Lamar, & Kevin. The issue, whatever it actually happened to be, was apparently fixed during the release of the most recent Jurgensen upgrade.

There is some dissent as to whether the problem was electronics-driven or due to an older housing (Tom's older Optima). However, since the upgrade, this has not occurred on Tom's unit again, at least to my knowledge.

By the way, the Optima is a perfect little lady and has been VERYwell-behaved lately <smile>.

As a non-engineer (is that a term? :-) the best way I can explain it is to document what occurred. John Jones, Kevin J., Mark Derrick & Tom M. can give a much more detailed explanation with a variety of arguments and counter-arguments :-)

At about 135 fsw/40 msw, my solenoids cut out. I was very new to RBs, probably dive 3 or 4, so I was a bit slow on the uptake here. The unit tested fine at the surface.

I was inside a wreck at the time.