Jess - Jarrod , Robert and I all are totally sick of the low lifes
attempting to get a free ride off of us. These exist as parasites because of
us. They use lies about us and our gear to further themselves and mislead
people for profit.

I don't care what the strokes buy, and I really do not want real strokes
with my stuff, and so far I have been fairly lucky in that regard. Strokes
hate the real thing. In JJ's case, he  has no choice, he is running a
business, and he can not screen his customers other than in the case of the
Halcyon Rebreather where the training is only conducted by GUE which itself
serves as a stroke filter because a stroke can not pass a GUE rebreather
course, I promise you that.

In my case, scooters are the lifeblood of our Project, not my business. I
make more money in a week at my job than Rodney and I together could take in
"profits" in a year off of these things. Maintaining and developing these
critical tools is done by selling some to outside people or groups. This
supports the project as well as the fleet of existing scooters in all hands.
I personally do these because I personally bet my ass on them every time we
dive, and I am responsible for the safety of the entire team. I want my
hands on every scooter that goes in the water at WKPP, and I want to
maintain constant contact with these devices. I see no other way to do that
but to do it myself, and I like doing it. I personally have about 20
scooters.

 Luckily, they do not break that often and they are easy to fix, or I would
be a busy boy.

 But otherwise you are right - the strokes deserve what they get, and a ton
of them got f**d in the process of trail and error out of these other
clowns, and are still taking it in the pail.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jess Armantrout [mailto:trout@ca*.co*]
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 4:55 PM
To: Trey; Techdiver@Aquanaut.Com; Cavers@Ca*.Co*; Quest@Gu*. Com
Cc: Wkpp@Ya*. Com
Subject: Re: [cavers] Scooter Debunking


Chief,
Who cares what the strokes buy?  The players know the score.

Trout

----- Original Message -----
  From: Trey
  To: Techdiver@Aquanaut.Com ; Cavers@Ca*.Co* ; Quest@Gu*. Com
  Cc: Wkpp@Ya*. Com
  Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 7:37 AM
  Subject: [cavers] Scooter Debunking


  As per the usual, Rod Nairnes is taking the tack with me that everyone
else takes when failing to come up with an intelligible argument against
what I am saying or doing. Below I have taken some misinformation, lies, and
complete bullshit from Rod's website about my scooter and have put it in
italics in a different color. My comments are in this font.

  FROM ROD's SITE in green italics, my comments in black :

  improvements over the Gavin, the following is a short list that
immediately come to mind, I'm sure there's many more...

  1) The first big difference is that the battery pack & motor clip

  together inside the UV-18 creating a single unit. In the Gavin my

  buddy dives, the battery pack is loose, simply resting on top of

  the motor. This makes charging the batteries and working on the

  scooter, placing weights for buoyancy and trim etc much easier

  with the UV-18.

  complete and utter baloney. The SS scooter is hard wired to the motor
compartment with hardware store crap. The wiring then runs up through the
battery pack and connects at the top. To take this mess apart is a
nightmare. The connections are cheap crap and the upper connector is cheap.
We have an access port in the motor lid for vacuum testing and inspection so
the this lid does not need to be unlatched or the connections disturbed to
check it. To visually see the whole motor, you merely unlatch the lid and
lift it off.

  We are using $68 worth of gold plated superconnectors to plug the battery
packs into the motor lid with sealing fittings. We do not constantly unplug
our scooter, we pin the trigger for transport. We do not want to wear out
these critical connections. There is no loosening of these connections. They
are the highest quality connectors available. Our battery pack is a unit
that can be changed out in seconds.  To charge the scooter, there is a
charging connector under the nose cone. The nose cone locks the batteries in
position. I make three choices of nose cone : nylon, pvc, and hdpe for any
of the scooters.

  ) The UV-18 appears to be manufactured to finer tolerances, so

  that the internal bulkheads only just slide inside the outer shell

  and presumable provide extra support if the outer compresses at all.

  The outer "shell" of the Gavin is PVC pipe with a 3/8 wall. I would
withstand 300 feet with NO bulkheads even if the pvc bulkheads were not part
of the battery pack. HDPE is like butter, and even in the lights we make we
have to bulkhead that little canister or is crushes immediately. I can
bulkhead mine for any depth,and have them set now for 500 feet. The PVC body
is lighter , thinner, accommodates more inside room, is stiffer, unbreakable
and if you rip out the latches or otherwise find a way to scar a sealing
surface, a new body costs 40 bucks - big deal. Or you can weld it with hot
air and rescrew it or sand off the scar. When hdpe is used for underground
pipe, they have to put a V shield over it because the mere weight of the
earth over it crushes it. Not the right material for a scooter body. We get
away with it in the lights due to the small diameter and bulkheading ever
few inches ( lid, bottom and between the batteries). I use the pvc body on
my hdpe scooters as well.



  3) The UV-18 has a simple connector routed to the top of the scooter,

  which makes switching the unit on simply a case of popping the lid and

  plugging the connectors together. In the Gavin scooter the battery

  connectors are hidden under the battery pack, so you have to take all
the outer shell off and struggle with the weight of the batteries. This has

  lead to my buddy connecting everything while on shore and leaving his

  scooter "live" all the time we're on his RIB.

  More nonsense: to get to the connectors you merely stand the Gavin on its
nose and unclip the tail. You can completely dismantle a Gavin in less than
one minute. You can change the motor out in 2 minutes, you can replace any
part in less than 2 minutes. The battery connectors as well as the reed
switch plugs run through openings in the side of the motor lid and plug in.
They are set so that the battery pack above it prevents them from coming
off. A little more thought from REAL experience scooter diving for years in
real dives where the scooters are truly life support equipment went into
these details.



  4) The UV-18 comes with a throttle where as the Gavin is operated by a

  plastic trigger. The throttle works much better, is more comfortable

  and is much more robust (it also comes with a lock screw). The trigger

  on my friend's scooter broke on the 2nd or 3rd use.

  More nonsense: there is nothing to "break" the trigger. Ask anyone who
does real diving why we use the handles and trigger, and why we would never
use a twist throttle. Ask Buchaly and Waldbrenner who hold the European
record. Ask  Jarrod Jablonski. Ask anyone who does real diving what the many
tricks of the trigger are. Ask yourself why the best in the business do
things the way they do, and ask yourself if the guys ( WKPP ) who developed
this , the Halcyon RB, the lights, the wings, backplate , the rigging style,
DIR , teamwork, backup lights and every other thing that is the best if we
would make or do something that was not optimal when it is so easy for us to
make or do anything we want any time we want? You saw how long it took me to
make a proper version of the SS - about two weeks from the time I got sick
of Rod's lies and his little buddies pumping out anonymous lies ( which
Alton is working on now, so we should have a name for you all soon from that
nonsense).

  Go to http://www.gavinscooters.com to see the scooters in detail, go the
http://www.WKPP.org to see them in use, or go to http://www.gue.com to see
more pictures and uses of these devices.











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