Hey guys. The owner of my LDS has been trying to gain interest in the Hollis Explorer. He wants to start selling them and providing training. I dont know alot about rebreathers. I know the basics of how they work. But i can't really figure out what makes the Explorer a hybrid. Are there Bubbles or not?? lol. To me, the unit looks a little bulky. I'm just wondering if its something i want to bother with.
The bubbles seem to be a fight between marketing and engineering. First they say "no bubbles" however it actually does produce bubbles, just not with every breath. They appear whenever it decides that it needs to add fresh gas.
While it does produce less bubbles than OC, I'm not sure I see a real reason to have all the risks and maintenance costs of a re-breather without the advantages.
Also, it sounds like the pre-packed sorbent carts that PADI wants are going to be expensive and hard to find, simply because pre-packed anything is usually expensive and it's not going to have enough sales volume to find them wherever you go.
According to the review in Sport Diver, the unit is limited to a one hour dive, after which it shuts down. While I have no idea how this is accomplished, it certainly doesn't sound very safe. I would never buy SCUBA equipment that can simply decide that my dive is over, regardless of where I am.
I can get longer on a single OC tank than the Explorer allows, and for the next dive, I just need to switch a $10 tank, not replace the sorbent (and the cylinder?) and go through the whole pre-dive checkout again.
It's a nice try, but I'm not sure who their market would be, and it only seems relatively safe if it has the CO2 monitoring "option" installed and the users is good about maintenance and the user has a redundant bail-out system.
Note that I don't dive a rebreather, so I'm probably their target market, and I still can't see anything that makes me want one.
flots.