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I have just come back from a weekend trying out the Ci-lunar mark 4 and I can honestly say it was different. Myself and 8 others went down to Cis-lunar in Poole to do an trial dive on the mk 4 in their testing tank. As for the course it was a bit expensive for what it gave you being 85 pounds for a couple hours of lectures and 15 minutes in the tank on the machine. Apart from that it was an experience worth trying if you are even contemplating diving a rebreather at some time. Enough people have spent time explaining the mk 4 to readers so that I will not bore you with the details and will limit myself with those things that I think are worth a mention. 1.If you have seen a picture of a Mk 4 you have probably thought that thing looks heavy. I can tell you it is a lot lighter than it looks and much lighter than twin 12 l and a couple of stage bottles. I did not get the time to try out different weights in water to get the buoyancy right but we were told that it is just slightly negative in water. I was overweighted in the tank which made buoyancy control a little more difficult. (more air in the counter lung) 2. Once you got the buoyancy right you had to then make sure that you did NOT breath out through your nose. With open circuit I do this all the time and it will take some doing to stop it. Besides wasting gas you also completely screw up your buoyancy. 3.Remembering to breathe was also something a couple of us had to think about. We had become so used to having an audible cue that we had breathed out when diving open circuit that you begin to question if you are breathing when you do not hear anything. I know we breathe like this all the time when were on the surface it just takes some getting used to on a rebreather. 4.It will also take some time to get used to all the different displays that are available on the computer, and how you can change them or reset the O2 set point. 5.The last negative point is that the only way to really dump from the breathing bag is by breathing out through your nose. There has to be a better way than this. Since to dump in a hurry would involve breathing in and out quickly through your mouth then nose. This is about the only design critism that I have. The rest of the system is well thought out and very easy to use. What I liked best was the ease with which you can switch from closed circuit to open circuit without taking the mouth piece out. This is a patented system and I think is a big selling point for this machine. The next bonus is the ability to use offboard gases plumbed in the system. You can add diluent three different ways to the system with manual control of O2 injection as well. The water traps to prevent soaking the scrubber seemed to work well but we did not really try too hard to flood the system. I have not tried any of the other machines about yet but hope to soon. They will have to work very hard to convince me that their system is better. Mr Grrrr described the maintenance of the cis-lunar as: rinse out the loop and spray some Dettox disenfectant in it every now and then; wash out the scrubber when changing the sofnolime; rinse the whole thing down and make sure you let the breathing bag dry out; about every hundred hours of use come in and get the thing looked at. He might have been over simplifying it a little bit but it did not sound like it will take a rocket scientist to use a rebreather which is good because there is never one around when you need one. In fact you you will all be able to see us in action using the Mk 4 in a documentary that was being filmed while we were there. Look for a program called the professionals in Jan/Feb on the Discovery channel. Cheers Gibbo John M. Gibbons 0171-793-1101 Home Univ. London School of Pharmacy 0171-582-6561 Fax Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry 0171-753-5800 Wk ex 4882 jgibbo@cl*.ul*.ac*.uk* or jgibbo@cu*.ph*.lo*.ac*.uk* -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@terra.net'. Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@terra.net'. John M. Gibbons 0171-793-1101 Home Univ. London School of Pharmacy 0171-582-6561 Fax Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry 0171-753-5800 Wk ex 4882 jgibbo@cl*.ul*.ac*.uk* or jgibbo@cu*.ph*.lo*.ac*.uk*
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