Post by Glenn "Whitebear" Kennedy on Jan 29, 2007 9:55:14 GMT -8
In the spirit of being an old fart ... excuse me "vintage" diver and this continuing stream of consciousness , here's a thread to trigger memories from anyone involved with the Otis AFB Fathomeers. Otis AFB was located right dead center in the middle of Cape Cod and the home of several squadrons of EC-121 radar picket ships. They were versions of the TWA airliner with a huge radar array, and flew extremely long duration radar flights along the northeast seaboard looking for Rouskie Bad Guys. Dad was the maintenance officer and on more than one occasion I heard him say we were doomed because the Russians had developed an oil-seeking missile The EC's didn't leak oil, they flowed oil
Anyway, I was lucky enough to spend two college summers (1966/67) and winter vacations there, and got to dive with the Otis AFB Fathomeers.
The first summer, keeping in the spirit of my bandito scuba instruction, we decided to start teaching in the base pool and issuing Fathomeers Basic Scuba cards ... do I sense an outlaw theme developing in my diving instruction career The base CBF let us use the base pool ... if you're old enough to remember, the pool was always justified\funded as a nuclear decontamination facility Much like our "duck and cover" drills in school, I have a hard time visualizing the entire base jumping in the pool after a nuclear attack ... but we got a great pool out of it.
One of the ways we paid back the base was by running demos in our aquarium at the summer base open houses ... I attached a picture of yours truly doing ditch and don with my trusty two hose in 1 foot of water. We also demo'd such vital scuba skills as drinking a Coke underwater, standing on our head (although our feet stuck out the top) and waving to small children.
The other thing we did was form a Search and Rescue Team and made ourselves available to the local police in case we were ever needed. Knock on wood, I never got called to pull any deceased passengers out of the water ... gee, should I interject a TedK/Mass comment here or let it slide?
The fun side of diving the north shore of the cape was LOBSTER . Back then in order to take lobster in any fashion you actually needed a commercial lobster permit (wasn't expensive) and the first day we went diving and came back with a sack full, a lady ran down the beach and bought them off us still dripping wet. I ended up buying a brand new regulator from my Bug Money that summer.
In addition to use of the pool, the base surplus unit along with help from the parachute shop, managed to get us various life raft CO2 cylinders that we turned to into twin tank setups. As flight cylinders, they were wrapped with steel wire to prevent in-flight shrapnel, and we spent finger-slicing hours unwrapping the steel wire so we could get a proper hydro on the tanks. And perhaps some Air Force resources were expended machining the proper adapters to neck down the bottles to accept the 1/2 inch pipe thread on the scuba manifolds ... not sure about this though ... I might be mistaken .... Oh Yea, I also forgot to mention the Ground Power shop "donating" the use of a mondo air compressor for filling our tanks. We had to fab up quite a Rube Goldberg filtration system, because those compressors weren't really made for supplying breathing quality air ... damn lucky we didn't get some form of lipoid (oil) pneumonia .... guess we were as rugged as the EC-121's
Also in our continuing quest for ecological correctness, we used to make our own lead weights at night in the kitchen. I worked that summer at the base service station and they let me take the old wheel weights. At night at Wince and Pat Siwecki's house we would melt the lead on the stove and pour our own weights. Our only claim to "safety" was being sure to designate that one pot for "lead only", and no longer to be used for cooking .... and since we're not mad as a hatter I guess we made it ... on second thought
Our major Dive Shop was New England Divers up in Beverly Mass, and going into that store back then was like going to heaven. They were stocked to the gills and full of fun and stories. I forget the manager’s name, but he was a huge guy with a shaved head, earring and missing one arm, or one leg .... some huge amount of body parts .... Wow, could he tell wreck diving seas stories. I had been diving USD Mistrals up to that point and they sold me a hot new Sportways unit (CSR disease prevents me remembering the model) that had both a LP fitting so we could rig up a nozzle to fill lift bags and a high-pressure port for a tank gauge. I was so proud to be the first kid on the block with both a J Valve and a tank pressure gauge, sans banjo fitting
Much like my college club, I lost track of the Fathomeers after Dad and Mom rotated to Tyndall in FLA, but there have to be some old Fathomeers C-Cards out there with my incriminating signature on them,
Glenn
Anyway, I was lucky enough to spend two college summers (1966/67) and winter vacations there, and got to dive with the Otis AFB Fathomeers.
The first summer, keeping in the spirit of my bandito scuba instruction, we decided to start teaching in the base pool and issuing Fathomeers Basic Scuba cards ... do I sense an outlaw theme developing in my diving instruction career The base CBF let us use the base pool ... if you're old enough to remember, the pool was always justified\funded as a nuclear decontamination facility Much like our "duck and cover" drills in school, I have a hard time visualizing the entire base jumping in the pool after a nuclear attack ... but we got a great pool out of it.
One of the ways we paid back the base was by running demos in our aquarium at the summer base open houses ... I attached a picture of yours truly doing ditch and don with my trusty two hose in 1 foot of water. We also demo'd such vital scuba skills as drinking a Coke underwater, standing on our head (although our feet stuck out the top) and waving to small children.
The other thing we did was form a Search and Rescue Team and made ourselves available to the local police in case we were ever needed. Knock on wood, I never got called to pull any deceased passengers out of the water ... gee, should I interject a TedK/Mass comment here or let it slide?
The fun side of diving the north shore of the cape was LOBSTER . Back then in order to take lobster in any fashion you actually needed a commercial lobster permit (wasn't expensive) and the first day we went diving and came back with a sack full, a lady ran down the beach and bought them off us still dripping wet. I ended up buying a brand new regulator from my Bug Money that summer.
In addition to use of the pool, the base surplus unit along with help from the parachute shop, managed to get us various life raft CO2 cylinders that we turned to into twin tank setups. As flight cylinders, they were wrapped with steel wire to prevent in-flight shrapnel, and we spent finger-slicing hours unwrapping the steel wire so we could get a proper hydro on the tanks. And perhaps some Air Force resources were expended machining the proper adapters to neck down the bottles to accept the 1/2 inch pipe thread on the scuba manifolds ... not sure about this though ... I might be mistaken .... Oh Yea, I also forgot to mention the Ground Power shop "donating" the use of a mondo air compressor for filling our tanks. We had to fab up quite a Rube Goldberg filtration system, because those compressors weren't really made for supplying breathing quality air ... damn lucky we didn't get some form of lipoid (oil) pneumonia .... guess we were as rugged as the EC-121's
Also in our continuing quest for ecological correctness, we used to make our own lead weights at night in the kitchen. I worked that summer at the base service station and they let me take the old wheel weights. At night at Wince and Pat Siwecki's house we would melt the lead on the stove and pour our own weights. Our only claim to "safety" was being sure to designate that one pot for "lead only", and no longer to be used for cooking .... and since we're not mad as a hatter I guess we made it ... on second thought
Our major Dive Shop was New England Divers up in Beverly Mass, and going into that store back then was like going to heaven. They were stocked to the gills and full of fun and stories. I forget the manager’s name, but he was a huge guy with a shaved head, earring and missing one arm, or one leg .... some huge amount of body parts .... Wow, could he tell wreck diving seas stories. I had been diving USD Mistrals up to that point and they sold me a hot new Sportways unit (CSR disease prevents me remembering the model) that had both a LP fitting so we could rig up a nozzle to fill lift bags and a high-pressure port for a tank gauge. I was so proud to be the first kid on the block with both a J Valve and a tank pressure gauge, sans banjo fitting
Much like my college club, I lost track of the Fathomeers after Dad and Mom rotated to Tyndall in FLA, but there have to be some old Fathomeers C-Cards out there with my incriminating signature on them,
Glenn