Post by sfcrawford on Jul 22, 2007 8:28:36 GMT -8
Hello all,
I am new to this board, but I have an interesting story I posted on another group about a dive this weekend. I would like to share with you.
I don't usually write trip reports about ABWA (Alabama Blue Water) dives, but I saw Daren out there today, and he suggested that I might write one today.
1981:
Shortly after I got certified, my dad and I started buying some equipment from this older diver in Beaumont TX that ran a dive shop out of his house. He was a well know black coral diver in the 70's, and had made air dives to over 300', been bent numerous time, and etc. – in short, he was a "technical" diver of the day. Anyway, we were over at his house one evening, and he said he had a regulator that he would give me as a wall-hangar. It was a US Divers DY JetAir double-hose regulator manufactured at the 11201 West Pico Blvd address. This would date it as being produced in either 1956 or 1957.
The hoses were rotten and basically gone, but the mouthpiece, the body, and the diaphragm were good; so I coated everything in talc, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it up.
Fast forward to the current day:
I was cleaning in my garage a couple of weeks ago, and I have a big box in overhead storage labeled "old dive gear". It has a wide variety of harnesses, regulator parts, an entire blue and yellow ScubaPro stab jacket from the 80's, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. I started going through it in the living room floor while I was watching TV one night and I found the newspaper bundle that I had, so carefully, put away twenty-five years ago. I unwrapped the bundle and started looking at this regulator that I had put up as a kid. It didn't look so much different than I remember it. The diaphragm was still pliable, the mouthpiece still looked good and so forth. I opened it up and it had some very minor corrosion on the inside, but really didn't look too bad. I got a little bolder and put it on a tank with about 1000 psi of air. Well, as expected, it leaked – but not very badly. So I got on the internet, and started looking around, and found out quite a bit of information about it. From the exploded diagrams that I found on line, I determined that it is basically the same regulator as the famous DW Mistral, the only significant difference is that it has a fiberglass housing instead of a chromed-brass housing.
For some reason, something about fixing it up intrigued me. I guess I have watched "Thunderball" too many times or something. I am too young to remember Sea Hunt, but I generally know about it. Anyway, I contacted Dan at Vintage Scuba Supply by email and sent him some pictures of what I had. He said it would be no problem to fix up, and told me to send it over – so I did. I got it back last Wednesday; all cleaned up, with a brand-new set of hoses, duckbill, mouthpiece valves, and etc. Oh yes, I also got one of those oval 1950's-style mask – yes they still make these brand new.
Today: I went to Blue Water, and broke out my trusty Dacor plastic backplate with a simple yellow and black harness. Fortunately, I am fairly experienced with diving without a buoyancy compensator -- truth be told, if the water is warm, and I don't need a lot of exposure protection that changes density, I prefer to dive that way; once you get your weight dialed in, you are perfect and nothing changes with depth. I have found, from experience, I can get by with a 3-mil shorty and an AL80 just fine.
So I assembled my rig, with an AL80 with 2300 psi (Dan reminded me that the old regs are not designed for 3000psi). I didn't have a gauge or reserve valve, on this tank, but I know my RMV well, so I did the math, and planned a very conservative test dive over off of the platform in the shallow grass bed area. After the normal comments, conversations, and etc. that my rig induced, I managed to get down to the platform and make a test dive. I noticed a couple of things: first, the "ancients" (you know -- the people that built things like the Saturn V rocket using only slide rules and paper) obviously knew what they were doing – the fifty year old regulator worked perfectly, I was breathing underwater and nothing screwed up. I spent a few minutes going though the motions of how to clear it and so forth (you have to do a counterclockwise 360-degree barrel roll while exhaling to get it completely dry). The next thing I noticed is that (while it is probably not going to replace my Apeks anytime soon based on ease of inhalation) it really didn't breathe that badly in the scope of things. It had no particular vices that I could detect. It is absolutely bone-dry in any position – which makes sense, it breathes better on your back or upside down – which also makes sense (but is very different from a single-hose reg), and the mouthpiece is fully supported by the air-filled hoses in the water, and is extremely comfortable. The other thing about the dive, other than the looks I was getting from the open water students, was that the 1950's designed mask I got is actually a pretty good mask, and I could see far better than I had anticipated. After a couple of short dives to verify RMV, I did a full 50 min dive, with depths ranging from ten feet, down to a max of sixty-one feet (the coldest I could stand in a shorty).
I wound up spending about two hours underwater today and I had an absolute blast. I just thought I would share my experience.
Sammy
p.s. I will try to post a couple of pictures if possible.
I am new to this board, but I have an interesting story I posted on another group about a dive this weekend. I would like to share with you.
I don't usually write trip reports about ABWA (Alabama Blue Water) dives, but I saw Daren out there today, and he suggested that I might write one today.
1981:
Shortly after I got certified, my dad and I started buying some equipment from this older diver in Beaumont TX that ran a dive shop out of his house. He was a well know black coral diver in the 70's, and had made air dives to over 300', been bent numerous time, and etc. – in short, he was a "technical" diver of the day. Anyway, we were over at his house one evening, and he said he had a regulator that he would give me as a wall-hangar. It was a US Divers DY JetAir double-hose regulator manufactured at the 11201 West Pico Blvd address. This would date it as being produced in either 1956 or 1957.
The hoses were rotten and basically gone, but the mouthpiece, the body, and the diaphragm were good; so I coated everything in talc, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it up.
Fast forward to the current day:
I was cleaning in my garage a couple of weeks ago, and I have a big box in overhead storage labeled "old dive gear". It has a wide variety of harnesses, regulator parts, an entire blue and yellow ScubaPro stab jacket from the 80's, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. I started going through it in the living room floor while I was watching TV one night and I found the newspaper bundle that I had, so carefully, put away twenty-five years ago. I unwrapped the bundle and started looking at this regulator that I had put up as a kid. It didn't look so much different than I remember it. The diaphragm was still pliable, the mouthpiece still looked good and so forth. I opened it up and it had some very minor corrosion on the inside, but really didn't look too bad. I got a little bolder and put it on a tank with about 1000 psi of air. Well, as expected, it leaked – but not very badly. So I got on the internet, and started looking around, and found out quite a bit of information about it. From the exploded diagrams that I found on line, I determined that it is basically the same regulator as the famous DW Mistral, the only significant difference is that it has a fiberglass housing instead of a chromed-brass housing.
For some reason, something about fixing it up intrigued me. I guess I have watched "Thunderball" too many times or something. I am too young to remember Sea Hunt, but I generally know about it. Anyway, I contacted Dan at Vintage Scuba Supply by email and sent him some pictures of what I had. He said it would be no problem to fix up, and told me to send it over – so I did. I got it back last Wednesday; all cleaned up, with a brand-new set of hoses, duckbill, mouthpiece valves, and etc. Oh yes, I also got one of those oval 1950's-style mask – yes they still make these brand new.
Today: I went to Blue Water, and broke out my trusty Dacor plastic backplate with a simple yellow and black harness. Fortunately, I am fairly experienced with diving without a buoyancy compensator -- truth be told, if the water is warm, and I don't need a lot of exposure protection that changes density, I prefer to dive that way; once you get your weight dialed in, you are perfect and nothing changes with depth. I have found, from experience, I can get by with a 3-mil shorty and an AL80 just fine.
So I assembled my rig, with an AL80 with 2300 psi (Dan reminded me that the old regs are not designed for 3000psi). I didn't have a gauge or reserve valve, on this tank, but I know my RMV well, so I did the math, and planned a very conservative test dive over off of the platform in the shallow grass bed area. After the normal comments, conversations, and etc. that my rig induced, I managed to get down to the platform and make a test dive. I noticed a couple of things: first, the "ancients" (you know -- the people that built things like the Saturn V rocket using only slide rules and paper) obviously knew what they were doing – the fifty year old regulator worked perfectly, I was breathing underwater and nothing screwed up. I spent a few minutes going though the motions of how to clear it and so forth (you have to do a counterclockwise 360-degree barrel roll while exhaling to get it completely dry). The next thing I noticed is that (while it is probably not going to replace my Apeks anytime soon based on ease of inhalation) it really didn't breathe that badly in the scope of things. It had no particular vices that I could detect. It is absolutely bone-dry in any position – which makes sense, it breathes better on your back or upside down – which also makes sense (but is very different from a single-hose reg), and the mouthpiece is fully supported by the air-filled hoses in the water, and is extremely comfortable. The other thing about the dive, other than the looks I was getting from the open water students, was that the 1950's designed mask I got is actually a pretty good mask, and I could see far better than I had anticipated. After a couple of short dives to verify RMV, I did a full 50 min dive, with depths ranging from ten feet, down to a max of sixty-one feet (the coldest I could stand in a shorty).
I wound up spending about two hours underwater today and I had an absolute blast. I just thought I would share my experience.
Sammy
p.s. I will try to post a couple of pictures if possible.