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Le/On 1 Oct 96 @ 12:30, vous ecrivites/you wrote:
> Two things have become dangerously obvious here lately.
>
> Seems there are two kinds of divers:
>
> 1. Those that depend on their gear to do what's it's supposed to and
> therefore put their money on the best possible for the job.
>
> 2. Those that want good gear but don't want to pay. These include
> the homebrewer (George reformed me with one of his sharp but
> accurate comments) and the cheapster. Homebrew makes it himself,
> cheapster gets his gear by the cheapest means possible.
>
> It comes down to this - when your life and the lifes of those you
> dive with count - do you really want to be diving with the cheap
> stuff?
>
> Not me.
There is cheap and cheap.
When you live in basically a third world country, and you have to live
with something like the equivalent of $15.000 US per year, and you
want to dive, you either have to do it on the cheap or don't dive.
What yould you rather do?
Should I have paid $160 for a pony bottle mounting gadget that only
allows me to mount it on only ONE large tank, or $20 for two hose
clamps, a bent bus bar and an used tank strap that will fit any kind
of tank, from a 72 cubic feet to a 120 cubic feet?
Should I have paid $35 for a pair of ankle weights, or just $2 worth
of lead shot in old bicycle inner tubes with three plastic cylinders
held together with a nut and bold and a tie wrap to hold everything?
When dive shops mark-up their prices 200% for things that are clearly
worth less than half they charge, you start to go shopping and you'd
be surprised of what you can find in old hardware stores.
Also, when you are dealing with a simple piece of gear, or something
that is not life-supporting (I would not dream of making my own
regulator - I scraped long enough to get a MK-20+G250) like a lamp,
why not go the do-it-yourself way?
That way, you don't have to pay huge inflated development costs (who
says manufacturers don't inflate their development costs), their
liability insurance and the outrageous markups distributors and
retailers charge you.
You end up with basically the same piece of gear anyway. Plus the
satisfaction of having handcrafted it yourself (and the well being of
not only having saved a bundle, but also not have given half your
earnings to some dive shop who doesn't know about advanced gear
anyway).
And, first and foremost, you end up with the very good satisfaction of
showing up on a dive and not flashing neon-pink-coloured bondage
wings, but instead a ragged assortment of various hardware kit-bashed
together that is guaranteed to make snobbish divers puke at once.
I dive to dive, not to snobbishly flaunt a level of revenue I don't
have.
------------------ Pour la Republique Francaise du Quebec ------------------
Canada: the only third world country that is a member of the G-7.
~~~ Last dive: Galop canal and the wreck of the Conestoga, 10 mfw ~~~
This is a long signature; Toto, I think we're no longer on FIDONET...
Marc Dufour - [\] ACUC6 31874 - TDI CD-0197 - http://www.accent.net/emdx
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