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Tod, I find the facts heard reported hard to believe. I've seen the MODSU 2 divers work at 230' 24/7. Only 2 divers are on the bottom at any one time due to the fact that they use a pre-mixed surface supplied heliox system and sur-d (now that is scary), 1 diver on standby & usually 2 chambers on hand. From what I recall surface support usually involves around 20-30 people: 4 per umbilical (16 total), 2 on stage winch, 1 on divers gas panel, 1 or more on compressors, boosters and gas storage cylinders, 2 on coms, 2 chamber operators, 1 or more dive physicians, dive supervisor and the big cheese, the master chief. The unit commander will also be on hand and all members will pull dive duty, including the physician and commander. They also use what they call a stage, I call it an elevator, for transporting divers to and from the bottom. That is from one ship. I understand that they either have 2 or 3 ships on hand now. Their bottom times may be in fact limited to 20 minutes (at 230' the longest was 45 min), but they will deploy several teams a day around the clock weather dependent. Time is of the essence here and a full on sat system would take longer to setup for this type of recovery and salvage, probably adding more complexity than it is worth at this depth. Safety is also of paramount importance which is why they use surface supplied with 2-way communications. They can't move much at that depth due to problems managing the length of the umbilical, but what they lack in terms of mobility they make up for their capability in what I call "heavy work" such as hydraulic cutters, welding torches and hooking up winches or cranes to aircraft components. Instead they move the ship around it's 4 point mooring and try to place the divers within 50' of where they need to be. Recovery of onseys and twoseys is one thing, 280+ bodies and an aircraft is a little different. From some of the discussions (reluctantly) I had with some of these divers who did the TWA 800 recovery, imagine a 8'x12' steel basket which already weighs over 2000' lbs. filled 3' deep with body parts. And most of these tough guys can't eat crabs anymore... Not that I have a morbid curiosity, but I was stuck on a ship with these characters for more than 2 weeks last summer and probably the only thing we had in common was diving. Although I could see some benefit to oc scooter divers in recovering things such as the aircraft flight & data recorders, the capabilities exhibited by oc dive teams in the TWA 800 recovery did not impress the Navy guys much. The Navy and many if not most commercial divers consider untethered and non communicating divers an unacceptable risk outside of very special applications. If there's any interest I'll put some pictures of the surface support on a web page... the underwater stuff will be out next spring in a NOVA documentary on George's favorite wreck (i.e. I don't have any rights to the uw stuff I shot). Regards, John ----- Original Message ----- From: <tgunther@co*.co*> To: <kirvine@sa*.ne*> Cc: <techdiver@aquanaut.com> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 9:50 AM Subject: EGYPTIAN AIR > According to the news this morning, the wreckage of Egyptian Air is at 275ft, > meaning only two divers can go for 20 miuntes a day. What is wrong with this > picture? > > Tod > > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. > -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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