My First Regulator, a ScubaStar TDQK

[vance]

This was the first regulator I owned, which along with a 1955 Renee 72 cu tank, a hard plastic backpack, and a doublehose regulator which I don't remember what it was (my memory of it is that it had rotten yellow hoses) that came in the trunk of a 1953 Chevy hardtop I bought in 1968-ish. I was 17.

I took the stuff to an LDS, and the owner pretty much confiscated the DH reg, telling me that there was no way to rebuild it and it was dangerous to use. He coerced me into letting him "dispose of it".

@#$%!

Whatever. I wish I knew what it was, though.

I still own the regulator, the tank (current hydro), and the backpack (very repaired with plastic welding and aluminum brackets holding it together that I made to it in order to use it back then). 

I got certified by Ed Brawley in 1972. This was the regulator I used for many dives in NorCal, including many dives in Monterey, Mendocino, and Humboldt Counties. It was all cold water, beach entry stuff with + - 15 ft vis.

One day in about 1975, when I met up with my dive buddy in Eureka at the LDS, the shop owner offered me a Calypso IV regulator for a price I couldn't refuse. I still have that one as well. It seemed to be a better breather than the ScubaStar, but that might have been to make me feel it was a good purchase?

[nikeajax]

Here the first one I ever owned: I bought it on eBait though:





I just really wanted a DH, and John convinced me to get it, but this was before the diaphragms were available, so I had to wait...

JB

[snark3]

My first reg was a Scuba Star also. I bought it new in Aug 1974 as part of a package from New England Divers in Beverly Ma. The package included a steel 72, a Healthways plastic backpack, a tank boot, and the Scuba Star. About a year after I bought this stuff my dad went to and auction and bought a bunch of US Divers stuff. He kept the Calypso J, I bought the Aquarius. I still have and use the Aquarius. I still have the Scuba Star also, but I haven't used it in years as it's the worst breathing reg I've ever used.

[vance]

Well, there's the tilt ScubaStar, and the downstream SSTD/TDQK. Totally different performance, IMO.

[vance]

Feb 24, 2024 15:24:11 GMT -8 nikeajax said:

Here the first one I ever owned: I bought it on eBait though:





I just really wanted a DH, and John convinced me to get it, but this was before the diaphragms were available, so I had to wait...

JB

My third was a Deluxe, also. That was much later, though. My fourth was a DivAir and then either a Snark III or a Mistral.

[cnotthoff]

Ed Brawley had that A-frame shop just off the Bayshore Freeway, and a shop on Foam in Monterey that is now the Sea Harvest Restaurant. My family gets tired of me telling them that's the place where I bought my first wetsuit (an O'Neill shorty). The pool in back was available for scuba classes, long after the shop closed. Sea Harvest recently removed the pool for outdoor seating.

I was certified by Les Newport at Aquasport in Redwood City. Still have the Deepstar I picked up used and dove for many years, adding a swivel for all them extra hoses.

Phil, we may have passed each other at the Breakwater.

Good Dives,
Charlie

[vance]

I took scuba certification at Ed's shop right off of Hwy 24 and the 680 freeway near Walnut Creek. The address might have been Lafayette, but it was closer to WC.

[cnotthoff]

Dang, Ed sure got around. I wonder if all his phone numbers were XXX-DID-DIVE.

Good Dives,
Charlie

[snark3]

Feb 24, 2024 16:59:30 GMT -8 vance said:

Well, there's the tilt ScubaStar, and the downstream SSTD/TDQK. Totally different performance, IMO.

Mine is just a plain downstream. I did hook it up to a tank recently, and it still works. The second stage still vibrates every time you inhale

[broxton coalition]

thanks for sharing "the beginning" Phil! pretty cool you were able to hang on to most of your first Scuba gear.
i was a skin diver for many years using my 1974 dacor faceplate before i purchased my first scuba setup(sherwood reg. mid 80's, so that doesn't exactly count here).

[vance]

I also still have the Mae West BCD, my custom wetsuit (NO WAY I'd fit in it now), Jetfins, and some of the weights I made out of tire weights melted down and poured into a mold.

I still have the mold, too!

[SeaRat]

My second regulator was a Scuba Star, my first being a Healthawys original Scuba. Here’s a discussion of the tilt valves in the Healthways line, and how Dick Anderson set out to improve the Healthways single hose line:

Jaybird,

I was hoping you'd post on this, as it is a great find. It looks like you have both the single exhaust and the double exhaust showing, meaning that Richard Anderson was experimenting with both these. That is very interesting.

Mark, I am reading Eric Hanaure's book, "Diving Pioneers, An Oral History of Diving in America." It has a detailed chapter about Richard Anderson, and a detailed description on how he worked on the Scubair and Scuba Star regulators.

In 1958 Sam LeCocq introduced the first successful single hose regulator, the Sportsways Waterlung. "The sales manager for Healthways, Randy Stone, talked me into going back to work for them. He felt positive that the so-called 'single hose' regulator would one day command the market.

"I got hold of the models that were selling, the Calypso and the Waterlung. US Divers was marketing the Calypso in the most negative way you can imagine, as if they were trying not to sell it. (It was) tremendously over complex, but with excellent breathing characteristics. The Waterlung was as simple as a mud fence. To me simple was good, complicated was bad. I came up with a regulator called the Scubair. If anything, it was inspired more by the simplicity of the Waterlung than the breathing excellence of the Calypso. The Scubair took a significant share of the market but had the same breathing limitation as the Waterlung, the tilt-valve second stage.

"Around 1960, Healthways started an R&D department with Gustav at the head; I was an engineer. Dalla Valle was the god, sometimes brilliant, sometimes ridiculous. I could no longer ignore the fact that the venturi assisted Calypso breathed just as easily at 250 feet as at the surface. A tilt valve in the second stage just couldn't cut it. I've got to hand it to Gustav, he and I tested every breating apparatus to 250 feet. I got tremendous pressure from Healtways to get around the Calypso venturi patent. I tried all kinds of things, but the Healthways patent attorney (turned each one down) as an infringement.

"One day I decided to try aiming the demand valve orifice at the mouthpiece tube, so some of the air deflected into the tube, creating the breathing-assisted venturi. I set up a bench test, and it did exactly what I hoped...The next day, I dropped to 250 feet at Catalina with Gustov...My prototype (was) not quite so smooth breathing as the Calypso, but on a scale of 100, mine was about a 97, the tilt valve was a 2 or 3. I was the happiest S.O.B. in the world.

"The good news was that I had a regulator that beat the unbeakable Calypso patent. The fitting that allows the pressure gauge to swivel (also) came right out of my nimble noggin but no patent was applied for because Gustav did not want Healthways to own them. The bad news was that in those days Dalla Valle was discouraging me from patenting anything ...His main goal in life was to out-Cousteau Cousteau. He wanted his won diving company...a big boat, expeditions, the whole deal. "

Anderson is sometimes credited with developing the o-ring piston first stage, although that is not his claim. Actually the concept is from a medical oxygen regulator, made by Sherwood before that company got into the scuba business. They had tried to peddle the idea to every other sport diving manufacturer, but were turned down because of Emile Gagnan's opinion that an o-ring piston wouldn't stand up in salt water and sand. Anderson had been trying to develop an o-ring regulator for Healthways' Scubapro division, using air pressure instead of a spring to maintain secondary pressure. As soon as he saw the Shorwood version, he know it would work. "I put it in a bucket of sea water and sand and cycled it thousands of times. I gave it more exposure in a week than a diver would in 100 years. So Healthways introduced this new first stage on the Scuba Star, the first o-ring first stage on a diving regulator. I enlarged that a bit for the Scubair II."...
Hanauer, Eric, "Diving Pioneers, An Oral History of Diving in America," Chapter: "From Hardhat to SCUBA, Dick Anderson," Watersport Publishing Inc., San Diego, California, 1994, pages 79-81.

It looks, Jaybird, like some of these second stages you have above were ones that were to be used for the downstream second stage.

John

vintagescuba.proboards.com/thread/4395/andersons-estate

John

[vance]

Welcome back, Jacob!