The New Dive Rite Optima CM - My 30 Hour Review

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I have both.
 
So if I understand it correctly, you use your bm setup for dil and bailout? If so, do you use a regular hog setup for your bm? Doubles, longhose, alternate? Is the alternate easily accessible or are the CL's up there? And if you do use a longhose, do you run it over the breather?
I think the idea of adding a breather to an existing (and easy to rent everywhere in the world) setup is brilliant, but as a rb noob, I wonder how it all would come together :)
 
So if I understand it correctly, you use your bm setup for dil and bailout? If so, do you use a regular hog setup for your bm? Doubles, longhose, alternate? Is the alternate easily accessible or are the CL's up there? And if you do use a longhose, do you run it over the breather?
I think the idea of adding a breather to an existing (and easy to rent everywhere in the world) setup is brilliant, but as a rb noob, I wonder how it all would come together :)

No
 
So if I understand it correctly, you use your bm setup for dil and bailout? If so, do you use a regular hog setup for your bm? Doubles, longhose, alternate? Is the alternate easily accessible or are the CL's up there? And if you do use a longhose, do you run it over the breather?
I think the idea of adding a breather to an existing (and easy to rent everywhere in the world) setup is brilliant, but as a rb noob, I wonder how it all would come together :)
Putting a chest mount CCR onto a set of backmount doubles is not really done by anyone anywhere (i'm sure someone has tried it but as a regular "thing" no)

Sidemounting al80s of bailout (one or more) would be much more common on pretty much any CCR, whether chest mounted or backmounted
 
Putting a chest mount CCR onto a set of backmount doubles is not really done by anyone anywhere (i'm sure someone has tried it but as a regular "thing" no)

Sidemounting al80s of bailout (one or more) would be much more common on pretty much any CCR, whether chest mounted or backmounted
I can see the appeal for someone who is doing hypoxic dives on OC already and wants to go CCR to reduce gas costs. Using exactly your existing setup (twinset plus 3 deco gases) as bailout, so if you have to bail out then you are in known territory, vs suddenly needing to sidemount 4 bottles.

The other benefit is that if the CCR decides to futz out on the boat, with a little bit of pre planning you can still do the dive OC.

My whole reasoning for getting a CM or SM CCR is because I don't want anything on my back, but I can see a use case for BM doubles bailout on a dive that does not involve restrictions etc.
 
I can see the appeal for someone who is doing hypoxic dives on OC already and wants to go CCR to reduce gas costs. Using exactly your existing setup (twinset plus 3 deco gases) as bailout, so if you have to bail out then you are in known territory, vs suddenly needing to sidemount 4 bottles.

The other benefit is that if the CCR decides to futz out on the boat, with a little bit of pre planning you can still do the dive OC.

My whole reasoning for getting a CM or SM CCR is because I don't want anything on my back, but I can see a use case for BM doubles bailout on a dive that does not involve restrictions etc.

No one would do this. That dive I posted earlier in the thread on the way to 500', I had side mounted two AL80's and butt mounted one AL40.

FYI, in well over 1000 hours on the Optima, I have never missed a single dive from a malfunction of the unit. It's the only rebreather I have that I can say that about.

Imagine a 4 hour dive in Open water at 100'. How little bailout do you actually need to bring? Not much at all.
 
FYI, in well over 1000 hours on the Optima, I have never missed a single dive from a malfunction of the unit. It's the only rebreather I have that I can say that about.

does that include o2 cells tripping out? (In date). I have far fewer hrs on my O2ptima, but have had two dives where either a bad cell, or bad connection caused one cell to flake out within the first 10m of the dive. Of course there are four cells, and I probably didn’t need to turn the dive, but in one case it was a training dive, and didn’t want my instructor to count it against me if I ignored the issue.

*I still believe the O2ptima to be a highly reliable eCCR, just a little surprised by a claim of 1000hrs with no failures.
 
No one would do this. That dive I posted earlier in the thread on the way to 500', I had side mounted two AL80's and butt mounted one AL40.

FYI, in well over 1000 hours on the Optima, I have never missed a single dive from a malfunction of the unit. It's the only rebreather I have that I can say that about.

Imagine a 4 hour dive in Open water at 100'. How little bailout do you actually need to bring? Not much at all.
I tend to be really conservative on my bailout, probably more so than necessary. On a 200' dive with 2x AL80 (one of 50 and one of bottom gas/dil (18/45 or similar)) I find I am limited to 40 min TTS on the CCR (which becomes 60min TTS on bailing out). If I had a 100min TTS I would want 4x bottles but again, thats me and MY settings, YMMV.

When it comes to CCR diving, I am very much in the Richard Pyle school of "when I had 50 hours I knew everything, when I had 200 hours I realised I knew nothing". I am not sure where the cutoff of actually knowing stuff comes back, because I am not there yet.
 

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