Italian Frogmen (combat swimmers)

[lowwall]

Some may think this is stupid, for wanting a pure O2 CCR, and being limited to 6m, but for me this is a huge piece of history that I would love to have a chance to emulate. Strictly for recreation, of course.

I would recommend having a rescue-trained buddy with you on any pure 02 dive.

 

[DiznNC]

Yeah I get that. My buddy and I both plan on exploring this route. So there would be a buddy team involved. First as a mixed team to work out SOP's and then to dive CCR together. Ideally with a buddy or two in a safety boat. An OC safety diver and an EMT as well. I'm a big fan of military SOP's, which I assume a lot of civvy rebreather divers do as well.

Even though we're only talking about 15-20' depth, we're also talking about BCD's as well as air BOB's. That's why I'm asking for advice here; I want to do this, but I also want to do it safely.

 

[Akimbo]

For any of you guys that have dived/are diving these rigs, any info you could provide would be highly appreciated.

One of the big differences with pure O2 rebreathers compared to modern Nitrox sCCRs and mixed gas eCCRs is it is much more important to purge the air/Nitrogen out of the bag. It is pretty easy to breathe the O2 down to hypoxic levels and still not have enough volume reduction to trigger the add valve.

I much prefer a backmount rig and it's not too difficult to cobble one together from parts if you can get a good price from someone trying to unload an older mixed gas rebreather. Ditch the electronics and sensors, convert the diluent bottle to air for bailout, and sanitize the loop. You can add a margin of safety by adding a depth-activated valve to inflate a wing a 22-25'.