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I�ve been using my drager atlantis rebreather for deep cave diving using air for the last 12 months. And have found it much more economical than purchasing a ccr or one of those halcyon things. I bought it at a garage sale for a very reasonable price. The breathing bag had a few holes in it but you�d be amazed at what you can do with a bicycle repair kit. I�ve made a few modifications to it, I�ve been worried about punctures to my hoses when ever I crash into the ceiling, I have a very fast homemade scooter that I use to do long penetrations and I still haven�t found a way to control it since it does not have any controls and you have to start it before you dive but that�s another story. Anyways my hoses are wrapped with stainless steel slinkys, they are very flexible and light and I can steal them from the kid next door. I dive with two 30cuft cylinders bungied to the sides and I find you can increase your gas efficiency by shutting down the valves every few breaths and breathing the bag down till I get slightly light headed in which case I add more air. I find that using air is very economical, and to prevent hypoxia I simply hold my breath on the initial descent from the surface until the mix is no longer hypoxic. Nearing the end of the dive I complete my deco at 50 and 40 feet using the bottom mix, although this makes for a long deco it gives time for my scooter batteries to die so that I can do a controlled emergency ascent. This is done because I find that if I do a rapid ascent from 40 feet to the surface I can get my head out of the water and take a fresh breath of air so that I don�t become hypoxic, much like the theory of shallow water black out in skin-divers. By mounting the tanks on the side it provides me room to mount my light in the original cylinder spot over my butt. The only down side to deep cave diving on air with this configuration is that due to narcosis it is sometimes difficult to see the line. Due to the difficulty in acquiring cave line in my area, i've opted to use monofilament line, it is much stronger and you would be amazed at how much you can fit on a reel. However the slight transparency does contribute to the above problem. As for the nitrogen narcosis problem ive found that instead of making work up dives(which can become quiet costly and time consuming) to build up my tolerance level I simply breathe nitros oxide at the surface, failing to have that available I drive down to the tavern across the island (to make for a long drive home), and consume copious amounts of the nightly special. Sometimes finding the way back home is difficult, however it makes for good practice for finding my way out of the caves. If anyone has any ideas on how to put an off switch on my scooter or modify my gear for going deeper than 297ft, as I have set this limit for myself ,because I am worried about CNS toxicity past 2.0 ATA. The last time I was in the chamber the lady told my I was breathing 2.8 atmospheres but I thought I�d be more conservative since we were in a safe environment. Thanx, kelpboy _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.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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