Daylonious
Señor Pantalones
Hey all!
Well, we did the Valhalla Missile silo yesterday and it was a blast. Cold, dark, deep, altitude, sharp rusted silty pointy things on the bottom, rusted catwalk overhang you could bump into - perfect!
I managed to squeeze in 3 dives (to 108-110 feet), the last one being with Timeliner (great diving with ya bud!). We brought some cheapy disposable cameras and shot several pictures of the flooded "control" room at 50' down the silo. Those Princeton Tec LED's we where using really put out a lot of light. Hopefully some of them come out (will post tomorrow!)
Lotsa interesting brickabrac at the bottom of the 110' flooded missile shaft. Lotsa little frozen mouse-icles too.
Water was about 57 degrees or so, but I had brought a 7mm hood, gloves and suit, so I was doing okay (last dive was a little cold tho!)
I think the 29% Nitrox really helped me out as far as fatigue went, the drive back to Dallas was tiring, but I think if I had done 3 dives on Air I would've fallen asleep!
Lessons learned:
1) 12 pounds isn't quite enough in a full 7mm suit to get you down. (had some water in my single wing when I went to rinse the gear this morning.)
2) If you own DIN regulators (I have Apeks Atx200's) BRING A FRIGGEN YOKE ADAPTER! I had to wind up 'borrowing' a first stage and screwing in my regs and computer hoses into it because I must've had a brain freeze and forgot that my tanks I had rented were not DIN's). THis must be the 3rd time this is happened to me.. Yoke adapter on order first thing monday morning.
3) Those "dry" guys are rather smug folks, aren't they?!? ;-)
Anyhoo, got my Altititude cert (Silo is at 2450ft above sea level), and really enjoyed hanging out with the SIS crew.
Big props to Terry (Degraw's husband) for letting me steal an extra first stage. It really would have sucked to have had to drive back to dallas with three full tanks.
Forgot to mention that the "plan" was to caravan from SIS's shop in Arlington at 6:30am. Me, being the new guy, and not knowing any of these people, NATURALLY thought that arriving there at 6:30 would be a good idea.
Nope, they left at 6:20.
SO, several frantic calls to wake up some sleepy-sounding dive wife in Midland explaining my situation, she directed me to the Silo.
Lesson Learned #4 : Get phone numbers from everybody. And if you're the new guy, show up at least 30 minutes before any scheduled anything or those arlington folks will ditch ya!
D.
Well, we did the Valhalla Missile silo yesterday and it was a blast. Cold, dark, deep, altitude, sharp rusted silty pointy things on the bottom, rusted catwalk overhang you could bump into - perfect!
I managed to squeeze in 3 dives (to 108-110 feet), the last one being with Timeliner (great diving with ya bud!). We brought some cheapy disposable cameras and shot several pictures of the flooded "control" room at 50' down the silo. Those Princeton Tec LED's we where using really put out a lot of light. Hopefully some of them come out (will post tomorrow!)
Lotsa interesting brickabrac at the bottom of the 110' flooded missile shaft. Lotsa little frozen mouse-icles too.
Water was about 57 degrees or so, but I had brought a 7mm hood, gloves and suit, so I was doing okay (last dive was a little cold tho!)
I think the 29% Nitrox really helped me out as far as fatigue went, the drive back to Dallas was tiring, but I think if I had done 3 dives on Air I would've fallen asleep!
Lessons learned:
1) 12 pounds isn't quite enough in a full 7mm suit to get you down. (had some water in my single wing when I went to rinse the gear this morning.)
2) If you own DIN regulators (I have Apeks Atx200's) BRING A FRIGGEN YOKE ADAPTER! I had to wind up 'borrowing' a first stage and screwing in my regs and computer hoses into it because I must've had a brain freeze and forgot that my tanks I had rented were not DIN's). THis must be the 3rd time this is happened to me.. Yoke adapter on order first thing monday morning.
3) Those "dry" guys are rather smug folks, aren't they?!? ;-)
Anyhoo, got my Altititude cert (Silo is at 2450ft above sea level), and really enjoyed hanging out with the SIS crew.
Big props to Terry (Degraw's husband) for letting me steal an extra first stage. It really would have sucked to have had to drive back to dallas with three full tanks.
Forgot to mention that the "plan" was to caravan from SIS's shop in Arlington at 6:30am. Me, being the new guy, and not knowing any of these people, NATURALLY thought that arriving there at 6:30 would be a good idea.
Nope, they left at 6:20.
SO, several frantic calls to wake up some sleepy-sounding dive wife in Midland explaining my situation, she directed me to the Silo.
Lesson Learned #4 : Get phone numbers from everybody. And if you're the new guy, show up at least 30 minutes before any scheduled anything or those arlington folks will ditch ya!
D.
