VooDooGasMan
Contributor
Dan it was your link that reck diver posted I remembered awhile back.
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You should also open this offer up to commercial divers. Commercial divers should know more about this then most scuba instructors.
I do not know that brand but I made something like it for kayak diving and it is very easy to use. I have on a couple of occasions put people in the water with it who wanted to try scuba. If you are putting an instructor in the water with these people it might not be a bad idea to have him wearing a 30 cu/ft bailout bottle in a Miller harness without the need for a BCD. It would also be a good idea for him to take up the middle position to reduce the chance that the other divers will get tangled up in each others umbilicals.
I just don't get this tooka thing. I pay $100 and I'm am tethered to two other "divers". We are positively bouyant and have 10 mins for the learning pitch and 20 mins in the water. All this while the baby sitter/timer hovers above, where due to position and time constraints be very limited to what he can show the "divers"
Even with a low end regulator, supporting 2 divers at 25 feet is easy, with no breathing restriction. The initial Tooka units have high end scuba pros regs, future units will probably skew more toward R 190 types . The two 80 cubic foot tanks, manifolded together by hoses, easily supply the air required for a 25 to 30 minute dive at 18 feet, or to 25 feet if we take a couple of people to the crown of Pauls Reef or the crown of Breakers ( 37 foot depth). The Blue Heron Bridge is still the model for Florida, due to weather patterns--it is good for this almost every day...unlike the ocean here. After each 2 person tour, we instantly replace the 2 tanks....This takes about 2 minutes, max.I have used a brownie with 3 guys, thirty feet. I know the compressor had trouble keeping up with high air demand. How is air delivery with divers with tank supplied surface air? Can one tank supply two trips?
Again, the dive industry misses the boat here....the non-divers do not want any training at all on the first experience...they just want to see if they like it, and if it is something they should "invest in". They have never had a scuba experience, and can only know it costs a lot, it takes a lot of time to get certified, and it seems like either you pony up the big bucks and LEARN DIVING, then hope you like it, or you never will get to dive.....I hear horor stories about the Discover Scuba Experience classes all the time, and have seen many in person....the tank, BC and weights put on the non-diving guest in the Resort course, can make the non-diver 30 pounds negative, or 50 pounds positive....They have no where near the training to be able to reliably regulate this positive or negative bouyancy, and it is always changing, and they are always in a position where they may be better if they make an "adjustment" to the BC by adding or dumping air....often they get this wrong, as do most open water certified divers with 20 to 40 dives under their belt...but the Resort Course non-divers know much less about what is happening or why, and many will become terrified.For the same price I can do the PADI Discover Scuba and get some equipment training in the pool, a class, then have my own kit and do a beach dive or the bridge. That's an hour in the water at least. The divers would be with an instructor and a divemaster in training. The LDS said most times you can even to an additional boat dive, for the price of the boat trip. This would be to the shallow reefs and even a couple of wrecks from the boca area south. If I'm not mistaken, this can even be used towards OW certification.
You are equating the problems of a non-diver, or newly certified diver, with the Tooka guest...and there is no comparison....The BC and weighting of the Resort course diver can have massively possitive bouyancy effects, almost destroying any chance of them enjoying the dive....the typical Resort course instructor does not want this to happen, so they OVERWEIGHT the poor non-diver, who then has to swim with huge air blown in to the BC, typically with a head up and feet rototilling the sand posture. It is tiring, they learn nothing about scuba beyond what it feels like to breathe underwater...and they are at huge risk if they hit their inflator too hard and end up rocketing to the surface.To me nothing worse then trying to dive being positively bouyant. I take many new divers out on my boat. They come out and we try to let them use the tools they've learned and gain experience and confidence in the water. (Then we go to Lake Boca and barbecue and drink beer.) The one think I stress is "never dive light". There is nothing worse than trying to see something on the bottom and having to fight to stay down. A puff or two in the BCD is better than having to stuff your pockets with rocks.
After last years thread, I didn't hear about a single customer. Nor were dive instructors eager to sign on. I'm sure it's fun, but for $100.00 for 20 mins, at the mercy of the three other people to which you are tethered, I'm not seeing the value. I can only imagine that after listening to the hype and seeing slick ads, the actual event would be a disappointment.
Thanks Rich,The instructor not attached to the same system makes more sense then what I got from your original posts. What has been the air consumption rate on average for two new divers? Could this be done safely with two divers above 20' for 20 minutes on a single 80 cu/ft tank? What is the advantage of this system over just putting two tanks in a sit on top kayak? A kayak might be a better way to go if you have two tired divers off shore the instructor could clime on the kayak and tow them to shore. What would you charge for two certified divers to take this system out on their own?