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Hi All I'm the other person who went on the Cis-Lunar course with Steve and collaborated on the posting which seems to have created so much interest. Steve claims to be busy at the moment, so I'll try and answer some of the questions that have come up. 1 CO2 absorbant will be pre-packed, this is to over come the problem of packeing it wrongly if you do it yourself. Apparently packing is not simple can doing it wrong can lead to the efficiency of CO2 absorption being drastically reduced with the concomitant increase in risk of hypercapnia. 2 If you do not take your unit in for a service it will shut down to make sure you can't use it. The onboard computer logs allsorts of diferent parameters and gives warnings about battery life, canister life, time to service and useage etc. If you have not used it in a while it will remind you to take a refresher course. The various logs will be interigated when your unit goes in for a service to check that you haven't done anything stupid. This may all seem over the top and a bit of a "big brother is watching" but I think the attidude of Cis-Lunar is right considering the newness of the machine, the potential to get into a lot of trouble if you don't know what you are doing and the need to satisfy various health and safety organisations that they are doing all they can to make the machine safe for "sports" divers. 3 We did not see a Mk5 so we can't comment directly on how hydrodynamic it is. My impression is that it will be more streamlined than a twin set. You could always add on go faster spoiler etc if it really bothered you. The advantage over a deep OC trimix set-up would I think be even greater, even with offbaord gas. 4 Buddy breathing with the closed circuit mouthpiece would be next to impossible in an emergency situation. Ingress of water could be minimized by switching the mouthpiece to OC whilst the mouthpiece is moved between divers. But, you have to remember that the mouthpiece is a twin hose design and not very long, a panicking out of gas diver would have to be literally "in your face". No thank you very much. If on a deep dive your buddy, whether OC or CC, should have enough redundant gas to sort themselves out. If on a shallow no deco dive, the small amount of offboard gas, or even a separate OC pony, should be enough to get an out of gas (air) diver to the surface. OC allows the use of long hoses,with all the advantages that brings. The ability to use the same equipment for all dives, is one of the big advantages of the CIs-Lunar (and other rebreathers) to me. With OC, a deep dive would need extra equipment to shallow no-stop diving. You need to be very familar with the kit and techniques needed for deep dives to prevent for instance selecting the wrong reg at depth. I can't see anybody diving with a twin set + side mounts et al for a shallow no-stop dive, thus requiring extra dives to maintain competance with full trimix kit. With a rebreather I could dive shallow no-stop dive with all the novices our club takes in every year (with enough OC gas just in case) and at the same time have all the safety advantages of optimised gas mix and deco. Using the same equipment and techniques (but with heliox as the diluent and a larger cylinder of OC gas) I could do deeper dives. Does anybody disagree with this (inviting comment my be a big mistake :-) ) and does anybody have any thoughts on diving in mixed buddy pairs (ie one on a rebreather and one OC), with the previso that the CC diver has enough gas to cope with and out of gas partner. Hope this clears up some questions and something to think and talk about. Ian Horsfall imh@li*.ac*.uk* PS I'm by no means an expert, Steve and I only went on a one day course
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