The New KISS Sidewinder is a Pretty Cool Unit!

[jblack]

Oh.........Dam
and thats my 2 cents...

 

[DA Aquamaster]

/...

/....Are you talking about the possibility of getting a false lock on the quick disconnect for the hoses? That's just incorrect assembly, and something to test for when you build your unit. I've never heard of or experienced the hoses randomly falling off for another reason. Similarly, you'd have to be a pretty big knucklehead to attach the hoses backward and not notice when doing your checklist.

As far as the Sidekick goes, I've never even seen one and have no experience, so I'll leave that alone.

I've had the hose come off the exhalation tower on my Sidekick due to the plastic hose clamp allowing the hose to slip off over the course of about 50 hours. It occurred while I was gearing up in shoulder deep water and totally flooded the unit. If it had happened under water it would have been unrecoverable under water. However, since the maximum stress on the connection occurs when gearing up, if it had survived that I suspect it would have survived the rest of the dive.

The rebreather side hose connection takes a lot more stress than the DSV to hose connections, at least on a Sidekick, and I replaced those hose clamps with stainless steel hose clamps. I also visually check the amount of exposed tower as part of the pre-die check now.

I have no issue with the hose clamp connection on the DSV side as they are m,such more visible and not prone to any significant stress.

------

I agree with you that you have to be pretty dense to connect the inhale and exhale hoses to the wrong sides, but if you did, the unit would still function. You should be blocking the respective sides anyway to check the function of the mushroom valves, and once that's done you just have to connect the exhale side to the exhale tower and it's hard to screw that up.

Still, I added color coding to make it more idiot proof, using colored electrical tape on the towers and matching tubular webbing over the SS hose clamps. The DSV end has matching red and blue coding as well. The same approach will work for any of the KISS rebreathers, where common fittings are used on both sides. While nice, I don't think it's a deal breaker if the connections allow for the unit to be assembled in correctly. If you're properly trained and knowledgeable on the unit, and are doing proper pre-dive checks it's just not an issue, especially if you take the extra step to color code the connections and further idiot proof the set up.

Lack of flood tolerance, although I realize this may not be that big of a practical concern in normal use, it still is of some importance to me.

I also am a little bit concerned about not being able to easily access the counterlung for cleaning and sanitizing.

Keep in mind that my frame of reference is the Megaladon. I liked that I could easily sterilize/flush the counterlungs post dive.

Let's face it, post dive the contents of the counterlungs are not the kind of thing you want to not easily be able to flush out.

The Meg counterlungs are great for flood tolerance, and easy to clean.
My feelings about them ranged from not minding OTS counter lungs....to being annoyed about them.

I had a love/hate relationship with them......which is one nice things about the SF2.
I will be checking out the SF2 soon. I'm headed back to Japan for work soon, and will have some time to see one up close, and dive one.
It looks like a very clean design.

Just creating some more distinction between "Sidekick" and "Sidewinder", since the same criticisms seem to get applied to both at times.

I've heard the "flood tolerance" concerns with the Sidekick, but to be perfectly honest, it's got ample flood tolerance. I've done 4 hour dives on it, and any accumulated condensation is easy to remove. You can put an awful lot of water in the counter lung and still recover. With the unit mounted on the right side, only 1 sensor is prone to getting flooded, unless you manage to fill the entire unit more than about half full.

The counter lung is also super easy to rinse and insepct.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Since you asked, here`s my opinion regarding this rebreather./...

/...On the other hand, this is also my humble opinion, the build quality of the units and the choice of materials is absolutely mediocre.
The quality of some of the parts is comparable with Home Depot hardware and not in any way adequate for a high end (and highly priced) life-support machine.

Meh...it's a philosophical issue. The F-16 was built with a fair percentage of off the shelf parts - it made the F-16A a very affordable aircraft by jet fighter standards - about half the going rate at the time - at least before the USAF filled it up with expensive avionics.

In that regard "perfect" is usually the enemy of "good enough" from an engineering perspective and I think Mike Young has a good grasp of that concept. Admittedly that may limit or perhaps define the market for KISS somewhat as there's some value in being mechanically inclined if you are a KISS owner as it does reward some modification as there are some low hanging fruit issues that can be easily "picked".

For example KISS was using a bent brass strip as a retainer for the bolt snap on the head and mine failed after about a week as the brass used was overly soft. That's not ideal on a $4500 piece of dive gear, but on the other hand, it took me about 10 minutes to fabricate a replacement from a piece of sheet stainless steel I had in the garage.

As noted above the plastic hose clamps are not ideal, at least on the rebreather side, but they are again easily and inexpensively replaced with stainless steel.

I also noted a vulnerability in the event of a diluent regulator high pressure seat leak with resulting IP creep. The increasing IP over time can result in the IP rising to the point that the user has to manually hit the ADV paddle to add diluent to the loop, due to the upstream design of the ADV preventing activation on normal inhalation. More annoying than anything else, but in the extreme it could result in a failure of the diluent hose, and force you to an alternate diluent source, and require you to feather the valve on that reg in the event you were to also bailout (admittedly an unlikely double failure). Mike has addressed that in a revised manual indicating that the diluent reg should also have an OPV installed to vent excess pressure and prevent this particular failure mode.

Several of my friends use(d) Kiss sidekick units which are notorious (at least the units shipped in the first 2 years) for having semi-flooded and failing O2 sensors and counterlung issues.
Once again, the concept is great, the choice of materials and some of the practical design is absolutely not. .../

There is a learning curve involved to overcome the perceived limitations - and the design has evolved.

I did find that my the sensor related issues were related to the splitters used to add redundant loop monitoring through a HUD. A bit of water and caustic, in conjunction with thin potting on the splitters led to some current loss. However re-potting the splitters with thicker material, taking care to keep the head a bit cleaner, and using sponges between the sensors to trap any excess condensation has totally alleviated the issue. The revised horizontal positioning of all three sensors also seems to have resolved the problem.

I've found that mounting the unit on the right places the sensors, exhaust hose and OPV/dump in better positions for a) earlier detection of water in the loop, b) easier removal of water from the loop, and c) positioning of 2 sensors well above any potential water contamination (Y shape relative to the bottom of the unit rather than an inverted Y).

I'm not sure who decided it should be mounted on the left, or why, but right side mounting makes more sense for a number of reasons, including the moisture benefits outlined above but also due to how and where people normally carry stage and deco bottles on the left side, and de-conflicting with the inflator location on nearly all side mount rigs.

I've also noted that with experience on the unit, there is now almost no water in the loop at the end of even long dives. Part of that is greater proficiency in running the unit with things like understanding issues such as the DSV being left not quite fully open where some leakage into the loop can occur, and part of that is simply not doing drills on every dive. I have not had a water and sensor related issue after the first 50 hours or so of time on the unit.

/...Next as to the trend of people getting pushed into a sidemount rebreather in the first place, that's just something I can't agree with at all either.
Having a sidemount rebreather totally restricts the possible use of bailout, even with a semi backmount unit like the sidewinder.
Backmount would work for 99% of the users and would benefit them much more in the long run.

We didn't get "pushed" into sidemount CCR, but neither did we find the transition to be very daunting. The caveat here is that we were both sidemount diving at the full cave level for about 5 years prior to the switch. We also had the discipline to back off to an Intro to cave level of diving for a significant period of time to allow us to build experience on the unit in non demanding conditions. I'm not sure everyone with the money for a CCR has the common sense or discipline to do that.

I would not recommend someone attempt to cross over to a sidemount CCR from OC back mount, as it's two separate skill sets that would need to be mastered simultaneously, and the curve would just be too steep for most divers, especially in an over head environment.

/...Having a sidemount rebreather totally restricts the possible use of bailout, even with a semi backmount unit like the sidewinder.
Backmount would work for 99% of the users and would benefit them much more in the long run.

I'm interested in hearing your reasoning as to why you feel "a sidemount rebreather totally restricts the possible use of bailout".

What matters is that the bailout be appropriate to the dive. The sidemount location of the unit allows a primary bailout/diluent tank on the other side along with a top mounted AL 80, and you can carry a bottom mounted AL 8 under the unit.

If you are diving offshore, you can use a Nomad style wing and actually use a pair of back mount tanks for bailout and, if needed, add a stage and/or deco bottle on the left side (with right side mounted Sidekick). That allows a pair of back mounted cave filled LP 95s or HP 130s (260 cu ft of gas), plus an AL 80 stage (another 77 cu ft) and an AL 40 deco bottle, for 337 cu ft of bailout gas, plus 40 ft of O2 for deco purposes if you bailed out, to be carried cleanly on the diver. In addition, the use of quick disconnects on each of the second stages allows all of the gas sources to also be used as redundant diluent if needed, and would allow a long hose to be used to donate diluent to another CCR diver on the team as well, all without running the risk of off board gas being routed into a common manifold (such was the case in the recent EN double fatality).

I'm not sure how you'd carry close to that much gas (4 AL 80s, plus a 40 cu ft O2 bottle) cleanly with back mount rebreather.

I do agree with you however that the way some sidemount CCR divers configure their units, they just as well be in back mount as they lose much of the advantage and utility of a sidemount configuration. Redundant diluent needs to be sufficient for the dive, but there is a fine line between carrying enough to get you out or to another source, and carrying too much - to the point that you negate the advantages and purposes of side mount.

 

[jblack]

Me? I'm going to set up a dive with Edd on one at the NSS-CDS conference. Why not? I love my SF2, but I don't think it will pout if I dive another unit.

did ya get a chance to fly it?

 

[The Chairman]

I did not... and from what I understand, few did. I'll have to make it up to Marianna and try it there if Edd will let me!