After disinfecting your counterlungs, there is often a pool of water left behind. Here is a tip for drying the inside of the counterlungs. Take a rectangular piece of chamois material and cut it like the pattern in the picture. You will end up with a really long strip of absorbent fabric. Now you can slip the chamois inside the countering and leave a tail hanging out the end. Hang it up overnight and the chamois will absorb all the remaining water.
A few years ago, I completed a Motorcycle Safety Class and was struck by the similarities to training rebreather divers. It was really good to be a student instead of an instructor for a change. It’s one of those experiences that reminds you what performance pressure feels like and reinforces the qualities of good instruction. I have to say that I am accustomed to thriving and performing well in new learning situations. However, I has absolutely no background in motorcycles and started off at the bottom of the heap amongst my fellow students. Everything was new. I was pleased to be…
Guest Post from Camrig Camrig offers us a reminder to pull that GoPro out of our dive bag and use it to document life and adventure in many other ways. If you have an idea about how to use your GoPro, there has probably already been a cool mount developed for it! Since the very beginning, GoPro users have been pushing the envelope, finding new ways to get amazing photos and videos. From taking the time to enjoy kite boarding POV to dropping GoPro cameras into the ocean, GoPro lovers have done everything they can to make the most of these amazing…
Most underwater videographers buy a couple of lights and mount them to their camera on arms, illuminating the environment, or a dive buddy at close range. Camera-mounted lights are generally acceptable for highlighting the main subjects in a scene, whether they be fish, fellow divers or a beautiful reef. However, if you want to elevate your creative underwater game, you may want to become familiar with “Practical Lighting Techniques.” Practical light sources are defined as lighting sources that appear in a frame and can be perceived as a part of the on-screen world. In other words, they appear “justified.” (Sometimes…
Question: You are swimming along the deck of your favorite wreck. For some reason your PO2 is dropping, causing frequent oxygen injections to catch up to your stepping. You keep dumping gas. What’s going on? Answer: It is possible that you have a leak in your ADV that is causing small amounts of gas to sneak into the counterlung. If your rebreather has a manual diluent injection button, that could also be leaking. Failures always require you to abort the dive, but you can diagnose the problem on the dive boat by removing and replacing the diluent connections to the counterlung or ADV…
Technical diver Gareth Lock focuses his attention on how human factors affect sport diving accidents. He has created an invaluable resource for CCR Divers with countless contributions to understanding human error in safety. Lock serves in the Royal Ari Force and often correlates his experience as a tactical flight instructor to application in diving. His company Cognitas Incident Management and Research also manages the Diving Incident Safety Management System (DISMS) which is an open, transparent, detailed, and importantly, confidential reporting system for sport divers irrespective of their preferred training agency or method of diving. Ultimately, the idea is to improve diver and diving safety through…
This post is provided by Gretchen M. Ashton, CFT, SFT, SFN, NBFE, Founder ScubaFit, LLC Co-author ScubaFit© Diver Course – also approved as the PADI ScubaFit© Diver Distinctive Specialty Hi Jill and Renee, I enjoyed reading your book Women Underwater; particularly the section on fitness for diving, and more specifically fitness for women divers. Often this discussion includes gender differences such as size, body shape and the unique health and medical concerns of women. I also think women are more interested in being comfortable than men which leads some women to seek out solutions and others to simply choose not to participate. Although generations of…
Pod Diver Radio interviews Simon Mitchell about his recent study into pre-breathing rebreathers. The results may surprise you! Listen to the the interview!
I recently published this short news item in the “In The Loop” newsletter I wrote for Hollis. It examines their efforts to build full face masks for rebreathers. At the international RF3.0 (Rebreather Forum 3.0) event in 2012, delegates unanimously agreed that further study off FFMs was warranted by the industry. As a result, Hollis launched a challenging investigation and design process, while training agencies PADI and TDI decided to begin curriculum development for programs to train CCR users in the safe use of FFMs. Full face masks (FFMs) are specialized enhancements that should only be used by experienced CCR…