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Nathan, I can assure you that system faults does occur with the Inspiration rebreather, it has in the past and will continue to do . It would bee foolish to think otherwise. Do you really think that it is fool proof just because it has 2 computers?. In 1997 i took a course on an early model of the Inspiration rebreather. I wanted to check out what all this with ccrb was. On a 25m training dive in Stony cove UK the solenoid jammed in the open position and spiked my PO2 up to 2.4. It was really quick and i did not notice the summer signal but i herd the solenoid was adding gas and i realised that something was fucked. I looked at my PO2 and the PO2 was at 2.4!! No reason to panic but still an experience you would like to avoid. I solved the problem with adding diluent and shutting off my oxygen supply bottle. When this kind of problem occurs it also offsets your bouancy because there is a sudden gas addition to the counter lung. It nearly made me ballistic in the process. I managed to hold on to a rock but if i had not the problem might have magnitued in to a potentatly serious one. So you see, even though it has redundant computers and all there is absolutely no guarantee for the unit not to fail. Also If the sensors give the wrong reading it wont help you the least if you have redundant computers. The sensors will eventually fail it is a question of when rather the ever. If you you inspect the sensors after a dive it literary drips moisture from them. All this moisture comes from your breathing and there is a lot of moisture from an hour of diving. Sensors are also sensitive to heat and will give false readings if you change the temperature. if you read a manual to an oxygen analyzer it says that you should not hold the sensor in your hands while analyzing. Why is this? Because your fingers heat the sensor and from that they will give incorrect readings. Furthermore, if you analyze your gas just after you have toped your mix with air you will have very wacky readings. Often they can differ with 10%!! This is because the gas in your newly filled tanks are warm and heat the sensor. in a rebreather the scrubber material heats the gas significantly and will probably give false readings. If one of the sensors give bad readings due to heat all of them will. It does not matter if you have 10 redundant computers and 10 redundant sensors. The big problem is that nobody can prove that anything of this have happened in the recent deaths and we will probably have continuous mysterius deaths in the future. Regards, Nathan Williams wrote: From reading various mail items on the subject, it is alleged that the Buddy rebreather is the problem - not the diver. I would disagree with such a sweeping statement. I witnessed a Buddy Inspiration rebreather accident at a inland diving site in the UK. It was during the early part of 1998, during the winter months, and the diver was using the lake as a training exercise. On his descent he stopped on a 6m ledge to carry out checks - where upon he promptly passed out. Fortunately another diver passed by soon after the event and upon finding the diver unconscious, lifted him to the surface. Luckily the diver survived, although the lift to the surface caused him to explode one of his lungs. What was the problem? Simply that he forgot to turn on his oxygen bottle. After breathing a few circulation's through the system, the oxygen level dropped low and he passed out. A fault with the system ? I think not, rather a problem that could of been overcome by a proper surface check. What about failed electronics? The Buddy comes with twin sets of electronics - master and slave configuration, so that if one fails a second set is available. I think the problems come more with divers lack of experience in using the equipment rather than problems with the unit itself. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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