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John

On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, John Thornton wrote:

> What machines did you feel impressed
> you the most? From the post I think it must be the Biomarines (500?),
> how did the cis compare? Was the Inspiration there and what were the
> thoughts?

The machines represented that I got to look at, included several flavors
of BioMarine, but I did not see a CCR-500 there. The Atlantis was there
but wasn't available for diving. The Divex Stealth was also present and
available for diving and looks pretty neat; it has a classy looking
computer and makes constant rate, varying duration, fractional gas
injections. So if it stopped working completely you would know right away.
I did not dive it, chime in someone who did. No CisLunar was present, but
several folk who dive this machine were: Billy Deans I think? and Peter
Readey was there from Cochran, but no machine. Note that there really were
some folks there who have hundreds of hours on these machines and can talk
from experience.

I don't think that it is fair to judge these machines by a 10 min in the
pool/lagoon tryout. All the designs we saw have a great deal in common -
just like our lungs. There is only so much you can innovate. They all had
a redundant means to measure you pPO2 and manual bypass for the
electronics. But I think that it's all going to be in the training, not in
the difference between the top two or three machines.

My money will be spent on a machine that has a track record. In today's
terms this means a machine that the military have been using for some
time. The others may be just as good or even better, but I don't want to
be the one to find out if it's reliable or more to the point, be the first
to deal with a previously undescribed failure at 100 fsw. My money will
also be spent on the best person I can find to train me. This probably
also means a military instructor (experience) who can "cross-over" enough
to train (great teacher) a wimp.

-peter heseltine

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