Dangerous gear?

[John C. Ratliff]

DA Aquamaster,

Thanks for that information. I wonder if this is what actually happened to a diver in the 1970s or late 1960s who died in Clear Lake, heavily over-weighted with an AtPak. From what was described at the time (and I have no written documentation on this), he jumped out of a rowboat and was never able to reach the inflator (inflator not attached?). But maybe, he got into an uncontrolled ascent, then suffered a ruptured bladder. He was found with an empty bladder on the bottom at about 90 feet. Again, all this is unsubstantiated information, but was "common knowledge" of the Oregon diving community in the 1970s.

SeaRat

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recall George Bond made a bouyant 302 foot ascent.

LA Co Underwater Instructor candidates were (still?) are required to make a 33 foot and a 100 foot bouyant ascent under controlled conditions. Never had a problem!

We find our selves in a different world with different rules and different players...Now there are very few divers but a whole lot of people who dive...

SDM

Yes that seems to be the case, lot's of people certified but very few really interested in knowing how to REALLY dive.
It's almost like the agencies over time purposely intended to bury away training standards from the past. Instead what we have now are new agengies like GUE and now UTD that are trying to fill the gap of where the big guys fall short.
I'm not really on board with a lot of their thinking and gear choices for the type of diving I like to do. It's a little too OCD/anal retentive and convoluted for my liking, but at least it's better than a three day Sport Chalet course.

The problem I see is people have no interest in diving history or where it came from and what it was like to know the differences and know what they are lacking.

I'm sure there is some inherently dangerous gear out there and while I'm not a qualified diving historian by any means, there must be stuff that was pulled off the market in the past that was dangerous.
Being a poorly trained diver is more dangerous than any gear out there AFAIK.
All gear gets safer as diving competency increases.
Any idiot can kill themselves with the absolute best gear if they don't know what they're doing.

 

[danvolker]

John, we were successful in making the fin work but it required cutting down the blade area and machining an adjustable "stop" that controlled the limit of the ankle angle. Left my calves really sore though. I'll see if I still have the machined part around for a photo, last I saw it was in a box of misc. crap.

I used the ankle brace fins in the late 70's/early 80's....They could be amazingly fast for short bursts, but even with weightlifter/cyclist legs, they were too stiff to use efficiently for slower flutter kicking---you need to be able to maintain a bend in the fin, for as long as possible, like with freedive fins...the Fara fins, or whatever they were called, stayed stiff like wooden planks ,exept at full power sprints.

They may well have worked well for frog kicks, but back then I had little awareness of frog kicks

 

[elmer fudd]

I'll nominate a couple other pieces of bad gear. These may not have been dangerous, but they certainly made things breathe badly.

1) The narrow Healthways doublehose mouthpiece. Particularly the one with the divider in the middle. When you peer into one of those, it becomes apparent that you have to inhale and exhale through little passageways about 1/3" in diameter.

2) The double mushroom exhaust valve on early Healthways Scubairs. Not only were the valves tiny, but the air had to pass through a series of two of them.

Looking at either of these two, I don't think there is any fixing them.

Another one that might actually qualify as dangerous would be cheater bars. The kind you would use to double up two single tanks without a proper manifold.
I'm a little skeptical of some of the early doubles setups that only used one band as well. Seems to me that a good bump could have caused a leak with those.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

DA Aquamaster,

Thanks for that information. I wonder if this is what actually happened to a diver in the 1970s or late 1960s who died in Clear Lake, heavily over-weighted with an AtPak. From what was described at the time (and I have no written documentation on this), he jumped out of a rowboat and was never able to reach the inflator (inflator not attached?). But maybe, he got into an uncontrolled ascent, then suffered a ruptured bladder. He was found with an empty bladder on the bottom at about 90 feet. Again, all this is unsubstantiated information, but was "common knowledge" of the Oregon diving community in the 1970s.

SeaRat

It's hard to say. If the LP hose was not connected pre dive, it would have been hard to connect during the dive - but a non-panicked diver would just sink to the bottom and then could orally inflate the wing.

Another AtPac feature that appeared to be really cool but did not quite work as advertised was the weight integration system. It used a hollow back plate with large diameter lead shot (perhaps 1/3" in diameter) and then used marbles to take up any extra space in the plate once you established the proper weight. This was a bit of a pain as you wanted to load the larger diameter marbles in first so the smaller diamter shot would fall out faster, so you loaded it once to get the right weight, then loaded it again with the marbles as well to get everything properly positioned.

The system used a fairly narrow trap door at the bottom of the pack that was operated by a two pronged wire/ring pull device,

The pull device worked fine, but the large shot was prone to bridging in the pack and would often not fall out. And the spaces around the trap door limited the minimum diameter of the shot you could use. I didn't know many divers who used the system, and those that did normally only placed part of their weight in it given its general unrealiability. It was a great idea and was one of the leaders in the charge toward integrated weight/buoyancy systems long before they became popular, but it did not work all that well.

With the Scubapro BCP, we filled the cam pack with lead shot by drilling a hole in the top, filling it and then plugging it. IIRC it held about 9 pounds of #6 shot and you could adjust the weight a bit with larger or smaller shot. It was obviously non ditchable weight but was in essence the 1980's equivalent of a stainless steel back plate and was in most respects the first "modern" BP/Wing arrangement.

 

[Couv]

Fun with the At Pack:

...

 

[cliffespada]

what is everone's take on dacor reg's??

 

[Couv]

I used a Dacor reg as my personal reg for about 14 years (1973-1987)and was happy with it. It was very dependable and breathed just fine. I also had a few of them in my fleet I used as an instructor and never had any problems with them. The issue with the older Dacor models now is (for no good reason) that they are more difficult to get serviced at a LDS.

 

[Paladin]

Poor designs IMHO:
US Divers AquaMatic
Any of the upstream needle valve second stages from several manufacturers

Scubapro pneumatic yoke pressure checker (not the one similar to the MK-6 yoke, but the slamming one).


Also poor design, not unsafe, just poor design:
US Divers Deepstar-II (the first Deepstar was fine)

The first Healtways DH exhaust system

The first US Divers dog bone style back pack with rings on the shoulder straps. It was very difficult to put on.

Caravel fins

Farallon ankle brace fins

Many other fins from the past and present.

Many plastic second stages like the early Sherwood (and several others) that notorious for cracking. Most of the plastic second stages are much better, but some are still susceptible to cracking.



These are the ones to come to mind right away. I am sure there are more.

I know this is an old post, but what is wrong with Caravelle fins?

 

[Nemrod]

I know this is an old post, but what is wrong with Caravelle fins?

I think he is referring to the original design that had blades which snapped on to a foot pocket. The current or semi current plastic fins with a blade similar to a Quattro is, I suppose, an adequate if nothing else plastic fin.

And, since this is a vintage forum, the ones you just bought are not vintage so they have that against them as well, no history in the day, not rubber, meh.

N