Hi,
today I went to Laguna for a test dive (in the pool) of a KISS rebreather.
Alan (from Kiss) was there for the dry part of the training and Se.... (forgot the Irish name ... but he is the guy next to me in the image above) did the in-water demo.
I have to say that since I did play quite a bit with our simulator, I was well prepared for the theory portion, but the in-water part still managed to "surprise" me .....
First surprise was the "OMG I can't breath" sensation as soon as I switched the BOV from OC to CC in 2ft of water
I came up immediately to the surface and I told "S" that the machine was broken ....
He, very politely, explained to me that "I have to suck it hard at the beginning" ... to fill the loop. Oppps
Forgot that the Kiss does not have a "diluent manual addition" control (we have it in our simulator).
Once past this minor incident, everything went fine and I really enjoied listening to the various underwater noises (the hissing of the oxygen, the pump of the pool, the cars passing by on PCH) other than my own bubble.
One thing that make me "uneasy" was that I was not able to control my buoyancy with my lungs and it took some time playing with the inflator/deflator of the BCD before I could manage a decent buoyancy (at the extreme depth of 12ft ).
By the way ... both instructors told me to use my nose to control the volume in the loop .....