wb5plj
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HI all,
Ok I know in general how regulators work. I have seen the light weight diagrams on manufactures websites etc. and I have every now and then seen some sort of 'work of breathing' charts for them. Usually printed very small in magazines with no explanation of what I am looking at or how to relate what I see to real world performance. What I don't know is what I don't know. The stuff that you get in a brochure is, well, marketing stuff and I don't care about that. My LDS has good intentions but does not know the deep technical aspects of regulator design and engineering. I of course don't know it either but I thought what the hay we might have someone out there who does this for a living. I mean someone has to right and likely they dive rite..
If you do then could you give us some incite, commentary, etc... I would think that a lot of us would be interested.
There are a lot more divers pushing into tech diving these days and they have lots of questions about which regulator sets to get, what makes a good stage setup etc.. for the most part the only criteria most of us have to judge these things on are
1) cost
2) Port number and arrangement, (this affects hose routing)
3) Users Opinion about performance
There are some other issues that may be discussed and they are valid as well as the ones that I have listed above. but what they leave you with is only really two quantitative categories (1,2 above) and the rest is qualitative which is of limited help unless you really really know the person well and you can put their qualitative statements into context. This is hard to do unless it happens to be your buddy that has the regs in question.
Thier is the issue of Subjective vs. Objective. anyone giving advice refrencing on qualitative issues is bound to be fairly subjective. Now that is not to say that qualitative advice is of no value as a matter a fact it is often of enormus value but my point is that it would be nice to have a balance of this information.
I will try and start off with a more specific question after that Oh so long introduction.
I have an Aqualung Legand ACD LX Supreme that I use for my recreational diving. It is a good regulator and I can tell that it breathes beter than some of my others. On Aqualung's website (but not in the documentation that came with my regulator) they say that the forward two LP ports have some sort of "turbo air" thing (I may have the *marketing* terminology a little off) and suggest that if your regulator is connected to this port it will breath better. So how is that posible. from what I know of the regulator the LP manifold (that part of the first stage) is one open area that would deliver gas from just one valve to the intermediate presure stage and all four ports come directly off of it. wouldn't that be just the same for all LP ports. is there some kind of thermo dynamicks going on here that is beyond me. And if so would this be common for all regulators that one or more LP ports would have slightly differant breathing characteristicks?
Incidentally I can not tell the differance. Which is good as I hook my long primary to the back port so that it won't have to cross over the shorter backup going over my shoulder (some of that handy hose routing tips)
Any rate, any SCUBA Regulator designers out there? any repository of actual numbers?
Ok I know in general how regulators work. I have seen the light weight diagrams on manufactures websites etc. and I have every now and then seen some sort of 'work of breathing' charts for them. Usually printed very small in magazines with no explanation of what I am looking at or how to relate what I see to real world performance. What I don't know is what I don't know. The stuff that you get in a brochure is, well, marketing stuff and I don't care about that. My LDS has good intentions but does not know the deep technical aspects of regulator design and engineering. I of course don't know it either but I thought what the hay we might have someone out there who does this for a living. I mean someone has to right and likely they dive rite..
If you do then could you give us some incite, commentary, etc... I would think that a lot of us would be interested.
There are a lot more divers pushing into tech diving these days and they have lots of questions about which regulator sets to get, what makes a good stage setup etc.. for the most part the only criteria most of us have to judge these things on are
1) cost
2) Port number and arrangement, (this affects hose routing)
3) Users Opinion about performance
There are some other issues that may be discussed and they are valid as well as the ones that I have listed above. but what they leave you with is only really two quantitative categories (1,2 above) and the rest is qualitative which is of limited help unless you really really know the person well and you can put their qualitative statements into context. This is hard to do unless it happens to be your buddy that has the regs in question.
Thier is the issue of Subjective vs. Objective. anyone giving advice refrencing on qualitative issues is bound to be fairly subjective. Now that is not to say that qualitative advice is of no value as a matter a fact it is often of enormus value but my point is that it would be nice to have a balance of this information.
I will try and start off with a more specific question after that Oh so long introduction.
I have an Aqualung Legand ACD LX Supreme that I use for my recreational diving. It is a good regulator and I can tell that it breathes beter than some of my others. On Aqualung's website (but not in the documentation that came with my regulator) they say that the forward two LP ports have some sort of "turbo air" thing (I may have the *marketing* terminology a little off) and suggest that if your regulator is connected to this port it will breath better. So how is that posible. from what I know of the regulator the LP manifold (that part of the first stage) is one open area that would deliver gas from just one valve to the intermediate presure stage and all four ports come directly off of it. wouldn't that be just the same for all LP ports. is there some kind of thermo dynamicks going on here that is beyond me. And if so would this be common for all regulators that one or more LP ports would have slightly differant breathing characteristicks?
Incidentally I can not tell the differance. Which is good as I hook my long primary to the back port so that it won't have to cross over the shorter backup going over my shoulder (some of that handy hose routing tips)
Any rate, any SCUBA Regulator designers out there? any repository of actual numbers?
