Reply to:     RE>>Sound of Scuba: diffusers/silencers


>> This leads me to ask a question of the rebreather users out there: what do
we 
>> sound like on scuba?

>A freight train.

with bad brakes. I had a chance to do some freediving around a pinnacle
in Australia and I was diving down to about 60-70 feet and could hear the 
divers VERY clearly. That gave me a new insight when taking photos to
stay very still and let the animals get habituate to the underwater freight
train.

>> If the problem is the exhaust roar, a diffuser would fix it. If the problem
is 
>> all the Darth Vader click and hiss on the inhale, then we're out of luck,
but 
>> even C2 must make that much noise.

>It's actually the Darth Vader noise that travels the farthest (I can 
>always hear a scuba diver approaching first by the hiss on inhale).  
>However, the bubbles are more distracting to fish at close range.  I'm 
>not sure how much is audio and how much is visual, but fish are always 
>startled when I exhale through the nose on the breather, yet they seem 
>oblivious to the click of the solenoid, or when I manually inject gas 
>into the loop, or when I take an inhale hit off the OC regulator.

Yep, definately the bubbles. They are not as load but the noise coupled 
with motion really spooks them.

>> Perhaps I was narced, or more likely just cold, but my final solution
(brought 
>> to you by the same idiot who thought of the tail-biting kangaroo rat inside
the 
>> mask as a deco computer HUD) was to route my warm exhaled gas into my
drysuit, 
>> with a hair-trigger metered (and diffused) exhaust to keep the suit
inflation 
>> level right. This would lead to huge condensation in the suit, unless you
used 
>> the reg-to-suit line to slightly chill the air and condense moisture into a 
>> trap.

Yeah Roger, you probaly were narced, or one of those trances that physicists
get when a new idea sweeps over them. 

>I think you'd be dealing with too much back-pressure on exhale.  If the 
>dump was "hair trigger" enough to reduce the backpressure, then your dry 
>suit would likely become a wet suit pretty quick.  Having never worn a 
>drysuit, however, I wouldn't know.

And there is NOTHING unhappier than a WET drysuit diver. They do not mind
the cold so long as they are dry (although there was that one dive in 
San Diego that even the drysuit divers said it is too cold, eh Roger)

Steve

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