AP and Rebreather World

fireman

How much does Rebreather World take in from APD. Is there a conflict of interest here?

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Heres to you Capt. Bill
Never Forget, and stay safe everyone.

Mixaddict

Dude, you're joking right? Thank goodness companies like APD are willing to advertise on forums like this. They are what allows you and me and all of the rest of the users of this forum to be able to participate. I'm curious to know what your agenda is with APD. You seem to be on the attack lately!
Have you ever even dived an Inspiration? Just curious. It seems to me that much of the noise on this forum lately, directed at APD comes from fairly new CCR divers with little or no experience on the units they are bashing. As a matter of fact, much of the noise also comes from "old time" CCR users who have never dived an APD product. Kind of curious! I guess everyone needs a cause!

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Randy Thornton (MixAddict)
Inspiration, Evolution,Hammerhead & Sentinel
CCR Instructor

caveseeker7

Randy summed it up pretty well on both accounts.

Without paying sponsors and advertisers it would be highly unlikely that Rebreather World would be anywhere near where it is now, if still at all. The costs for the servers, software, occasional hiring of professionals to sort out issues or add features adds up rather quickly, and this site has cost Stuart quite bit to set up , maintain and improve. Wouldn't have been possible without people helping or companies paying for ads.

As far as treatment is concerned the staff isn't supposed to make a difference, and we're trying to treat members fairly, no matter if they financially support the site or not. Advertisers and supporters have gotten green blobs, red blobs and infractions just like anyone else, have gotten suspended, their posts deleted etc when they didn't play by the rules.

But I'm curious why you single out AP?
While they have been advertising for a long time on Rebreather World, they're by no means the only manufacturer supporting us. JM, ISC, r Rebreather, all sponsors here, as are many others, yet you single out AP.

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Cheers
Stefan



"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.!"

cramerdn

How much do they take in from ISC?

How much do they take in from rEvo?

How much did they get from you?

How much do scuba magazines take in from advertisers?

How much do politians take in from corporations?

Are there any there?

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"Its better to live one day as a tiger than an entire life as a worm."

"But who's ever heard of a worm skin rug?"

gallathan

I think Mix addicts comments were spot on on ALL counts

jkaterenchuk

Contact Stuart and have him sell you the website and then you will be entitled to know and impact the answer.

John

fireman

Hey fair enough.
Yes its a business, and its (mostly) none of my business.

Part of the "Goodwill" of Rebreather World is it is (mostly) a fair and open discussion with a lot of people from all over the world with different opinions and experiences. Its worth alot to me, I spend time here, learn stuff, get a few laughs, and a few aggravations. I can say with perhaps 50% certainty what I have taken from this resourse may have daved my life. And certainly without Rebreather World and some of its members I wouldn't have gotten engaged in this enjoyable activity. Thank You everyone. Of course if my wife got her hands on you it might be a different story.

What we do is dangerous, what we talk about here is important--people have died doing this. I'm sorry, but thats the way it is. More people will die doing this "hobby". Anything I can do I will. I would hope that that would be a priority to the people who run the sight. If you make money more power to you, thats capitalism. If you lose a little and do it for love, thank you.

Perhaps we are at some kind of a crossroads or nexus in the history of rebreather diving. With appologies to Dave Sutton, previously you had to be a tinkerer or an experimenter. At the very least you had to work hard, and perhaps invest a huge amount of money (think MK 15) if you wanted to use a Rebreather. Perhaps soon, we will have a "perfect sport rebreather" that is cheap, tested, not only doesn't kill people, it will stop them from killing themselves. (Yeah I know call me an idealist, but some of these qualities anyway--to the point where the complication and risk appoach that of rec OC anyway). Right now we are some where inbetween. This has been beat to death, but it is true.

But talking about issues here has and will save lives. Sometimes the Shit will fly, people will be angry. This is a small price to pay.

Now out and out bad taste, non functional rudeness shouldn't be tolerated. Hey I have been guilty of that, had it pointed out to me and appologized the best I could.

As an adult, sometimes I get in to arguements with people. But as an adult I usually come to one of the following conclusions:

We are arguing a question of fact--don't argue, look up the fact, or acknoledge that it is not available.

We are arguing a question of opinion--we can agree to disagree, or call each other names, whatever.

We can maintain our opinion but learn something along the way.

We can keep arguing for fun.



There are clearly some outstanding issues, some of these fall into the last catagory, yes. But people have died and we (I at least) want to know why, and at least learn from them.


My dig at AP:
Yes I have dived one once, it was very nice.

Two teachers of mine use them and do some amazing dives (Radomski, Ron Benson)

My completely unscientific observation is that people who use them, but don't have much timeon them have a lot of "problems" that they are a little fiddelly and complicated. This is just what I have seen from being around them some.

It seems a few people have died using them, but we don't know exactly the
numbers and conditions. This is a problem--see "facts" above.

The fact that AP is somewhat secretive, and to me faceless is a problem:

I built my first rebreather, so that manufacturer is an asshole, but accessable.

Paul of rEvo is not only accessable, but friendly and brilliant. He seems to address problems before they come up.

My contact with ISC has been limited, but I emailed them about the meg O2 cell thread and a person replied within a day to me by email. I think, but don't know that you can get a hold of a person, Leon even in short order if you have a question/problem with his units. Alex has raised some fine points with the meg that it would be nice to have a direct answere to, but I percieve these as being orders of magnitude smaller than those with AP.

I know some Sentinal/Boris divers, thay like their units, I have witnessed several "problems" with the Boris (Flood due to maintenece, and an pod flood) both of which were inconvient, but not fatal. The Red sea thread on the Sentinal, and a conversation with one of the participantgave me the following: The red sea class was a bit of a beta test, but it was instructor training and controlled. A Plus for Identifing problems and fixing them after though. Also I believe that Boris is the only rig that has actually passed CE, which as I understand it is a good rigorous test, plus it shows commitment.

Mk15--I looked at one and I am impressed, plus I have an aquantance who has dove one for the navy, very impressive dives.

KISS- have one of there BOV's very easy to deal with. Hey they invented "KISS" say no more.

and we could go on. and on.

Does the above display some bias toward mCCR's Yes.
In my OPINION: eCCR's have killed some people. Some because of bad training, ,some because of bad maintence, some because of complacency (it is hard to avoid knowing your PPO2 with a manual, but possible to "fake" it for a while anyway with aneCCR), AND some because of bad design.

And I suspect that early AP products had bad design, and that the companies responce or lack there of killed some people.

I suspect that AP current products have some flaws which may be fatal.
At the very least I think that they are not an appropriate choice for beginning rebreather divers.
Yes I know, I obviously think that everyone should start with a mCCR of some sort.
But I percieve YBOD to be even less appropriate for low hour users, as I said they seem to be mechanically finacky, and there have been alleged problems with the electronics.l

So there you go, I'm not trolling, or "here for an arguement (sorry Python), thats what I think.

I think much of what people have objected to that goes on here is a result of secretive and bad business practises by AP and if they were dealt with much of the fustration that comes out as rants would be moot.

Lastly, to those of you who have died, we will remeber you and honor you by trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. Rest in peace.

Kevin Ward, aka firman, in Chicago IL USA

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Heres to you Capt. Bill
Never Forget, and stay safe everyone.

cramerdn

Evidence to the contrary not withstanding?

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"Its better to live one day as a tiger than an entire life as a worm."

"But who's ever heard of a worm skin rug?"

Mixaddict

Kevin,

Thanks for your post. At least I now understand where you are coming from. I'm not going to defend AP. It's not my job to do so. I dive and instruct on several units - Inspiration Vision, Evolution, Sentinel, Hammerhead, Dolphin etc., so I feel as though I have a pretty good understanding of several units and have a fairly open mind about which units are appropriate for different types of situations and what their strengths and weaknesses are. I guess the biggest beef I have with some of the "big noise" posters on Rebreather World is that they speak as though they are ultimate experts on various units, when more often than not, they have little or no experience on the units they are bashing. More often than not, these so called experts are regurgitating information they have read in another post on RBW or another forum and speaking as though they are "in the know".

Freedom to post on these forums is what makes them great as well as frustrating. The small handful of people who have an agenda, for what ever reason, usually generate the most noise, and unfortunately IMHO the people generating the most noise are rarely the ones that new CCR divers should be listening to!

My experience with APD, Juergensen Marine and Delta P have all three been VERY good. I have never ever felt like there were any games being played, and deep dark secrets, and I certainly never felt like any of the above companies were purposely withholding information or not being completely forthcoming when it comes to safety. Certainly, they protect their trade secrets. All companies do. But none of the above companies, at least in my experience have been anything less than honorable in their dealings with me or my students. Just one man's experience! I'm sure ISC, rEvo and other companies are also professional stand up companies. I just don't have any personal direct experience with them. I can really only speak to the units and companies that I have personal experience with.

Does this mean that all of the units they produce are perfect in every way? Of course not! Hopefully they will all continue to perfect their units over time. Is it our job to help them understand and appreciate our concerns with various units? Absolutely! But, I guess the single biggest piece of advice I would give CCR divers is "don't believe everything that you read on the internet" posted by "self appointed safety experts". They are rarely what they purport to be! In many cases they absolutely don't know what they are talking about!

You are right about one thing - Rebreather World makes for occasional great entertainment!

Regards,
Randy

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Randy Thornton (MixAddict)
Inspiration, Evolution,Hammerhead & Sentinel
CCR Instructor

divetheworld

We pay for advertising here too. In fact, we paid as supporters before we advertised as sponsors. Anyone can pay and I hope everyone does.
What I can state from personal experience is that the staff here are not biased in any way. They do a very good job under difficult circumstances. I consider most of the staff here friends, but that doesnt mean they wont kick my ass if I get out of line. And so it should be.
If there was evidence of bias from staff as a result of advertising, then you should contact Stuart, Stefan, Dave Coops or Beanie. Or all of them and explain your situation and ask for it to be resolved.
In the mean time, I dont see any reason for concern having been a member since nearly the opening of the site.

What might be a conflict is if a CCR manufacturer did buy the site. IMHO.
How much do you want for it Stu?

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