I have been offered the oportunity to do a try dive on an APOC
Ill do a full write up on it
Cool Mark, I expect it will prove interesting to a lot of folk.
Please don't take this as an insult Brad but I think you will have to (begrudgingly) agree.
Almost anything you promote is automatically ridiculed, alot of respected people (including apparently the CE authors) think DSV Retainers/Gag Straps (call them what you like) are a good idea but the message is meeting alot of user resistance IME. Could you Not mention them in regards the Apoc, perhaps a little disassociation will give them greatly traction?
I quote from a conversation I had last year- "I won't be hanging anything round my neck because that ginger tw*t says its a good idea" Sorry to be crude but that is the ground level reaction to things associated to Alex/OSEL amongst active divers, ie- prospective customers.
Ben, I agree with you BUT whose the fool to ignore something blatantly obvious that is there for their safety?
Would the message meet user resistance if since 2003 all CE marked rebreathers came with some derivative of retaining strap or FFM?
If all CCR instructors on CE marked units had to show the safety benefit of a retaining strap in minimising the risk of drowning as a part of training?
If every customer who bought a CCR that is CE marked asked the manufacturer and instructor how does this "minimise the ingress of water during normal use and in the event of a diver falling unconscious or having a convulsion."?
http://www.ccrexplorers.com/showthread.php?t=16720&page=3&p=161095&viewfull=1#post161095
They say "Talk is Cheap" but I suspect in regards the Apoc all the talk has cost sales, hindsight is a bugger I know but Alex should have kept quiet until he had units boxed ready to ship.... that means he would still not have told us anything about it!
A Catch 22, to get that functional safety that Alex achieved you have to openly disclose an awful lot. Now if every manufacturer of a CE marked rebreather since 2003 had done the same and also acheived functional safety for certification for it would we really think it unusual? We also wouldn't have the Apoc as there wouldn't have been any market for it!
Brad, I find it quite amazing that you can continually bang on about the merits of CE certification and then either through innuendo or direct comments criticize competing companies' CE certifications as somehow less than sufficient.
Randy, I pose a question for you. It should be really easy to answer. For the CE marked units that you or your sons are instructors on could you please advise how they each "minimise the ingress of water during normal use and in the event of a diver falling unconscious or having a convulsion."
Now for the Apoc and rEvo its obvious as they both have retaining straps...... I provide the link above to Pauls post where he quotes the latest CE standard EN14143 but this requirement to provide a means to minimise the ingress of water has been unchanged since 2003. If you can't answer the above question for CE marked rebreathers it would appear to me that is a very obvious non conformance to the standard...no?
If an obvious non-conformance can be visually identified just by looking at the unit how many non-obvious non-conformances exist? I am an interested buyer of another CCR but if obvious issues exist it makes me real curious about what I can't as a layman "test" against the standard without published performance data.
Another case study and question to you. Whats causing CE marked rebreather users with soft uncased BMCLs to complain and post about a lack of counterlung capacity on the surface with the wing inflated? CE marked units need to provide a minimum of 4.5L breathable capacity in all orientations and they need to confirm this for CE cert.
http://www.deeplife.co.uk/or_files/DV_OR_Tidalvolume_090911.pdf
Additionally, somehow in your mind, the APOX is safe to dive with non-CE certified 3rd party components but other companies' CE certified units must remain original and become unsafe with any modification by using non-CE certified 3rd party components. My head is swimming. I can't keep up with your double standards and convoluted interpretation of the "gospel according to Brad's CE"!
Randy, If other rebreathers are safe to dive with those same third party components why would they effect the Apoc and suddenly make it unsafe? The Apoc is designed for third party elecs to be added to it, it always was.
When have i ever said other units should remain original? I have asked what the effect of say adding or changing the BOV might be... As an example the JJ-CCR has published WOB data for its BOV in CC mode at around 1.1J/L IIRC but a lot of folk modify that by fitting the GG Shrimp which AFAIK has a WOB of around 1.4J/L at 40m on air at 75lpm. What effect does that maybe 10-15% increase in rebreather WOB have on the divers safety? Folk might say improved OC WOB but have you seen the WOB data in OC for either BOV? Wouldn't it be better to "upgrade" a BOV by fitting one of verifiable lower WOB.....
I was, as you would call it, an "Early Adopter". The test diving had already been completed by the time the likes of Jill Heinerth and I got our hands on an Explorer. A group of 10 or so of us EA's did have input into the human factors of the unit so I guess in that regard we did have a say on the end product. Did that influence have any bearing on the CE certification process? I highly doubt it.
Matt, That would be one of the requirements for the technical file...
If you would bother to do some investigation prior to launching your Pavlovian slagging of other manufacturers products, you would understand that the Explorer automatically analyses the gas during the pre-dive process. So Brad, NO it cannot. The Explorer will catch the fact that you have installed a cylinder with something other than the gas you said you would plug in and alert the user to that fact.
Cool, how does it stop those users diving? The Poseidon also warns divers not to dive and we know the result of that...
The Explorer is designed for and advertised as a maximum use time of two hours per scrubber fill and will alert the user if they overstay the ability of the scrubber to sequester free CO2 with both the CO2 counter and a simple time counter. The system also has a thermistor array to monitor the heat front of the scrubber during use.
A G-Shock with a 2 hour timer would appear to be the cheaper option than the optional CO2 sensor. If the max scrubber duration to CE is 2 hours logically the inhale CO2 sensor would never alarm if you stay inside the recommended dive duration...
You may claim that it was "designed" to accept 3rd party add-ons, but it has not been ANSTI-tested or CE certified in any way, shape or form in any configuration except as the dumb, O2 loop that received CE!
Chuckle, yes it has
selling units to the us or others i believe is perfectly legal since CE is not required by these counties again please let someone who knows correct me .
cheers
mike
Mike, not being directly in the game I can only pass on what i have been told about. I would strongly suggest you look into it very carefully....
Regards
Brad
