And we started the class today.. He will be in the water tomorrow diving it for the first time.
Just ordered my FATHOM!
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Ken how did your hp seat failures pop up? On a dive or predict or both? You’ve got me paranoid about my regs. I’ve never been an Apeks fan and haven’t been a fan of these regs since we got our units. Any idea how long it will be until y’all figure out if the mk17s are a good switch and Charlie starts getting blanking plugs made? Being a life long Scubapro fan I’m ready to switch
My wife and I have been going through scenarios of what to do if we do have a reg failure at different points on a typical cave dive. If anything it’s been a good discussion starter to get us thinking.
My wife and I have been going through scenarios of what to do if we do have a reg failure at different points on a typical cave dive. If anything it’s been a good discussion starter to get us thinking.
Pavao
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I think several of us have already figured out it’s a good switch.
Easy choice for me; Stick with Apeks and KNOW they’re prone to have issues or go with MK17s which are not known to have HP seat issues. If I do have issues with the MK17, then it would be no different than if I was using Apeks.
Easy choice for me; Stick with Apeks and KNOW they’re prone to have issues or go with MK17s which are not known to have HP seat issues. If I do have issues with the MK17, then it would be no different than if I was using Apeks.
They're not yet, but should be available soon through Martin at TecMe. There's three or four of us currently testing them out on the Fathom, Marcello, Baldwin, myself and I think Jason B (not sure on that). Gary Donahue's also testing one out on his hybrid meg.
BTW -- I've been told by someone that would know better than I that Apeks changed their seat recently (within the last six months?) to address the failure problems and that a new new new first stage or rebuild kit should be fine.
BTW -- I've been told by someone that would know better than I that Apeks changed their seat recently (within the last six months?) to address the failure problems and that a new new new first stage or rebuild kit should be fine.
OP
Finished up Fathom CCR MOD1 today with @kensuf at Hudson Grotto #satansbutthole It was actually a pretty cool and unique dive site. The top 80' are a brackish tannic water and then about a foot of hydrogen sulfide (stained some of my hardware black) and then salt water down to 130/140'. I could not be happier with the instruction I got from Ken. For a 100% newb on a CCR (never even a try dive) I have to say the Fathom is an excellent unit to fly. At the end of my class I now have 9hr50min of loop time and some memories that I will enjoy for the rest of my days. There were a lot of times I could hear Ken chuckle in his loop as I was "working" on my buoyancy and would be sinking past him screaming into my own loop. I also did ART with my MOD1 and it was funny to hear the both of us talking to each other as it sounded like a couple of chipmunks fighting over a nut.
Nice seeing you guys yesterday. Luckily Satan's butthole is a close drive for us, so when it' busy we can just go get breakfast and skip dealing with all of the people. There was a large class that was checking in at the shop. I still haven't been down past 60ft in Hudson. It's gross and weird and I despise it, but my wife says it's cool down deep.
I didn't do any try dives or anything either other than 5 minutes on Edd's sidewinder. The fathom made more sense than any other unit once I learned about it. I've been more than happy. Good choice adding ART to the mix. We had some basic trimix before the class, so put helium in our dil. For pretty much any cave dive, helium is nice. Even in peacock we still use helium. It's totally unnecessary but can't hurt. I like 21/35, 30/30, and 25/25 as dil personally. 30.30 and 25/25 are great for most slightly deeper places like Ginnie and LR. The nice thing about 30/30 is the deco schedule is so close to 32% that I just dive it as if it is 32%(when planning for deco) and then add a little deco buffer just like I would 32% anyway. Not sure what helium % ART limits you to.
The key now is to just dive it as much as possible. You'll have 10 perfect buoyancy hours in a row, then all of a sudden it will go to crap, then get better again. It can be frustrating at times, but worth it. The biggest issue we've had is our schedules have limited us to 1 dive every 3-4 weeks. So we'll dive 2 weeks back to back and really feel good, then can't dive again for 3 weeks and feel like we've taken a step back. If you need somebody willing to do some basic dives with you let me know.
OP
That will be awesome and we can put it together. I am banished from the caves until I have at least 25-30hrs on the loop. Then I will put a trip together and go dive with Ken so I can get his blessing. Once that is done I can start my cave progression all over again. LOL I was telling Ken that learning the CCR seems very much like learning to drive a car, when you first start driving you are always making micro adjustments and watching the lines in the road and as you get better you have a way of staying in the lines without all the little jerking motions back and forth. You get better at judging your speed and throttle response and braking, until one day you are just driving and not "thinking" about driving. I am still "thinking" about flying this bad boy so open water it is for me.
We've just started doing dives at Peacock after about 20-25hours. We waited until we didn't feel like complete disasters until considering it. My wife and I are ultra-conservative so we felt pretty good before we attempted. We are doing the dives or lesser that we did at Cave1 level. All mainline, no jumps yet, and not far into the cave. I still think about it some, but not much. At this point the thinking is more about how I can things better as opposed to "ahhhh I'm blowing my buoyancy." As time builds figuring out which of your 3 sources of buoyancy should be adjusted becomes dialed in and you maintain an ideal loop volume constantly. Much of our training in mexico was in 20ft or less of water and then we came back and dove the OW basin of Ginnie for a while. It can be really tough because when you're in 12 ft of water one minor depth change makes a huge buoyancy change. Staying in shallow water really dialed in our buoyancy, but it was very boring and often frustrating. I'd be happy to do OW dives. I need to work on free ascents. Team free ascents were the one thing we failed miserably in our class. Being cave divers we never need to use that skill.
OP
You wanna talk about boring, do almost 3hrs on the loop in Blue Grotto. Looking at the rec divers literally walking along the bottom near Peace Rock was fun. The best was watching Kirill teach part of his Cave 1 class. The rest of the time was me stacking rocks and Ken hitting me with drills. Some drills I was pretty stickin awesome at and others I would have a cranial lapse and forget that I can NOT clear my loop when I am not on it. All in all it was an awesome experience and a fun time hanging out with Ken.
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