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Hi Rod, Thanks for your comments. While I will be the first to admit my rebreather experience is essentially zilch next to yours, I can say without reservation that many of the skills I learned while flying fighters are directly transferrable to diving. While certainly the physical requirements are quite different, the mental aspects are very similar; from pre-mission/dive planning to the operation of a complex piece of equipment (fighter/rebreather) in a hostile environment. Initial and recurrent training to deal with emergencies is part of every professional flight program and IMHO should be part of every divers personal dive program. Now there are several ways flying differs from the SCUBA community. The first is the level of training involved: for a private liscense, a typical program include 10 to 20 hours of classroom, 40 hours of flight time and about another 40 hours of brief/debrief time. After all of that you still have to undergo a check ride with the Feds. Then you get the fying equivalent of the C-Card. Another difference is regulations, they would fill a bookshelf - enought said. Finally, ALL pilots are required to undergo a flight check at least every two years. Now, please don't get me wrong. I am not advocating this type of program in the SCUBA/CCUBA community. I bring this up as an example of what our government can do. Remember, in the days of Orville and Wilber there were no regulations. Then people started flying, crashing, and burning and the government started drafting regulations. Once there were regulations, people still crashed and burned and soon, armed with these new regulations, people sued. The result was more regulation (this time defacto by the insurance industry) and increased costs, resulting in almost no basic light aircraft production in the last 20+ years. My only hope is that we can learn a lesson from this and avoid it in the SCUBA industry. Keeping my above comment in mind, I'm certainly not endorsing the Cis-Lunar approach as being the correct one - but it is one way of attempting to ensure a basic level of training, usage, and recurrent training. I hope you and they would be open to suggestions about the best way to move forward (I wish I had one). Unfortunately in our society today, the stupid (sorry if this is a bad word President Bill) actions of a very few can have a tremendous negitive impact on all of us. Let's all try to work together develop the best programs we can to utilize this technology before the real Big Brother steps in. Safe Diving [\], T.J. McCann tjm@ea*.ne*
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