I have been hearing good things about the Apocalypse rebreather and the ALVBOV.
Yup, much to obviously their regret its not quite the doom and gloom portrayed by some of the above posters....
There is a quite good semi active Apoc owners group that discusses issues and from that there continues to be semiregular deliveries of Apocs. I have a Type IV with the iCCR elecs still on order and have also placed an order for a Type II and Type VII Apoc. The II for when I get back into more serious diving and the VII for travel. The BIO350 is a lovely little dive computer and I will enjoy diving that mCCR with their PPO2 pod using the non temp compensated coax cells.
I have also read about their ALVBOV loop that you can adapt to an existing rebreather. The claim is that it will greatly improve the WOB of any rebreather it is connected to.
I know at least one diver has done that with a Boris and posted pics of it dived. Its pretty easy to research the WOB of various DSVs and BOVs and confirm the WOB of the ALVBOV ranges from slightly to significantly better. If the BOV manufacturer doesn't publish WOB data I personally put the ALVBOVs WOB in the significantly better category...
In addition I have read that the ALBOV has a co2 monitor built into it.
The iCCR version does with the electronics. The CO2 is monitored using both the elecs ontop of the ALVBOV and the CO2 pod.
The ALVBOV that most folk are diving on their Apocs is manual only.
My question is, does any one have any first hand information/experience about/ with this rebreather and BOV?
Zirk, what would you like to know. I have an Apoc in the shed and have a number of hours on the iCCR and mCCR and O2 versions.
I think a lot of people on here own or have owned an Apocalypse. Very very few of them have ever actually seen one though.
Thats odd Iain AFAIK all those that ordered the Apoc at $995 and have since wanted to split their order would appear to have received it... Those holding out for the iCCR elecs, sure I agree with you but we still can't buy an alternative though even 4 years later.
Regarding being better than other BOVs, there are so many claims thrown about by all the manufacturers, I find it hard to know if a rebreather part is better than another or if I'm just hearing spin and politics from manufacturers and fanatics raving about insignificant positives whilst glossing over the negatives. All rebreather manufacturers probably do this to an extent, but the Apocalypse crew are the worst by a massive margin.
Iain, lets look at that in some more detail. The Apoc and the ALVBOV have been around for over 2 years now being actively dived. DL publish in quite some detail quite extensive specifications about the performance of the Apoc. Do you really think they wouldn't have been called on those numbers by another manufacturer if they weren't accurate.....
I would love to discuss the negatives, especially if we can then do a direct comparison with the alternatives...
Avoid. They have had my money for years, promised many things and finally when they were going to "ship" me something they told me that the people that i was corresponding with did not have the authority to agree to the things that they agreed to. End result, they still have my money and I have not received any product, because i am unwilling to send them any more of my hard earned cash.
bored@6, I can only find 3 posts here from you... Assuming its not a sock puppet account, whats your order number? I am quite happy to email OSEL myself to see what the story is with your order....
;TLDR - Avoid, buy from someone more reputable.
Cool, I want to buy another CCR that is certified to the CE standard EN14143 either 2003 or 2013. Please provide the name of an alternative reputable CCR manufacturer that meets this standard and has zero nonconformances to the CE standard that are not listed on their cert? That should be simple.
Bernard Madoff's Stockolypse perhaps? I hope you get your money back. At this point his excuses and waffling are beyond shameful.
Guess this is the spin off of selling a CCR after it has CE certification to the standard. BTW, how are you going at Hollis with the PRISM2 and Explorer getting through the CE cert process? It seems awfully quiet, I though folk were being sold that both units would have CE years ago....
I have actually seen one in the water. It looked well done and thought out. Ask Simon A for specifics. I wonder how long before Brad comes along to boast about CE and WOB and telling us that other manufacturers are effectively liars.
iaygm, I'd love to buy an alternative rebreather but its a little hard to do a comparison or actually even confirm what I would be buying. Strangely it seems that not many manufacturers publish much in the way of verifiable data about their own units performance.... Lets start simple, if you dive a BOV what is its WOB at 40m on air and at 75lpm?
To the OP as you can see there is a lot of controversy about the Apoc. The interesting thing to read about is why... where it gets very murky with a lot of mud thrown and that to me just makes it that bit more interesting a product.
Regards
Brad
