El Quseir with a rEvo

AndyP

This is intended as a bit of a trip report with a mention of the rEvo as a travelling companion.

For various reasons I have been out of the water on and off for the last year. Somewhere along the line I decided to sell my Inspiration Classic and get a rEvo. In truth, I wanted something that was lighter, fitted in anything other than a giant yellow box and allowed you to move forward into a current rather than act like an underwater sail.

The problem was, I got the rEvo, did the course in the South of France and then put it in my dining room for two months. Solution, it's October in the UK, not so nice. Whereas October in Egypt, very nice. So off I went for a week.

I stayed at the Movenpic in ElQuseir. This is half way between Hurghada and Marsa Alam so I figured the weather would be hot - it was.

The Movenpic is a fantastic hotel, but retains that nearly but not quite aspect of being in Egypt, I love the place for that. If it was perfect it would not be nearly so much fun to be there. OK, so it's not cheep, but it is very comfortable. The one thing that was a bit disapointing is that the food is not awesome and only just makes it up to very nice.

The dive centre attached to the hotel is run by a company called Subex, more specifically it is run by a chap called Georg Reichelmann and he runs a tight, well organised show. They are not really set up for rebreathers, but a call to Tekstream in Hurghada (Paul Vinten is a good bloke) got me a couple of tins and a 7L bail out. Georg then arranged to collect them, from that moment they could not have been more helpful. Space was made for me to set up the unit and safe storeage overnight was organised. I have to say, they were very professional, very helpful and all the guides and staff could not have done more to make my life as easy as possible.

The diving is mostly done by jumping off the jetty or being run around the reef by rib. OK so it is not the most exciting diving in the world, and they really do NOT want you to go below 30M. But the reef is in excellent condition. In fact it is very well cared for to the point where they limit the number of divers allowed on it at any one time. It is noticable that they cared about the conditon of thr reef. It was perfect for my purpose, which was to get used to the rEvo once and for all.

The rEvo,
I kinda got pursuaded to get one by a friend of mine who currently has a KISS. To be honest, I was not hard to persuade, I read the manual liked the idea of it and ordered one. The rEvo handsets are a pain. A pain that is until you get how to turn them on and off and to calibrate the unit. From that moment on you love them. It really is just a question of having the knack. Tap, tap, tap.......flash, flash.......tap, tap. Very easy, just a question of knowing where to tap it, not how hard you smack it against something )

So, now I love the thing. It is bullet proof, not necessarily Andrew proof, but it is bullet proof. It never missed a beat, not once.

The scrubber is incredibly easy to load, actually I will correct that a bit, you can get a bit of a slope on the surface if you are not careful, but it takes 30 seconds to sort out. Cleaning it and drying it are beyond easy, a 2 minute job.

In fact, I love the thing, diving it is a dream. Move your feet and you shoot forward, you can roll onto your back without severe hamster cheek. Only going vertical produces a slightly uncomfortable moment. I found at shallow depths you become slightly more boyant. But once you know that, your sorted.

One more thing I discovered. Firstly, flushing the unit with dil is easy. Bailing out to OC is easy. But once I had done it perhaps 20 times you would have thought I would have got it sussed. Nope, not a bit of it. Guess who forgot to close there mouth piece. Yes, you got it, me. Would have been OK except I had been messing about so much that I was down to about 60 bar on the 7L, and at 30M. OK sure I would have got back, but I decided to go down the experimental road.

Things I discovered;
1) Sofnolime when soaked in salt water does not taste very nice.
2) The rEvo WOB when flooded is actually bearable
3) as advertised it is possible to flood the top scrubber and the bottom one to remain dry.

It is the last point I found the most interesting. I got a fair amout of water in there. Not filled up you understand, but enough to kill off and Inspiration and I could, in fact I did stay on the loop.

So, in conclusion.

ElQuseir is a fantastic place to go with a new piece of kit to get used to it. The diving is done from shore and the staff in the center want to make your life easy.
The rEvo is a seriously good piece of KIT. Paul has done a great job and there are certain features which make it very safe to dive.

I like em both.

Take care all,

Andrew

paulraymaekers

great to know you had a good holiday, Andrew! :-)

paul


ps... change the details on your avatar

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