So after a little time to think about it(10 seconds) we arranged a try dive on the unit, just a quick check out dive at Holborough lakes.
Well colin and myself checked the unit on the saturday, topping up the cylinders with air and oxygen, packed the scrubber. and then switched the beast on, to calibrate it and make sure all the cells was working correctly.
On the sunday I drove to Colin's and we shared the journey up there, I was feeling a little bit nervous trying out the new bit of kit. As Holborough is only just of 10m in depth this wasn't going to be a problem. For extra protection I took a 7Ltr stage with air in which was also attached to my drysuit.
We unloaded the car and put the rebreathers on the benches and kitted up, drysuits on and stages all ready to go. Well it was now or never!
Dive1: This would allow me to get the weighting correct and make sure that I could breathe properly before we went out to the 6m platform. Well I needed 12kg og lead and had another 2kg's on the pouch at the top of the rebreather. This amount of weight allowed me to sink easily however not to fast. We did a surface swim out to the 6M platform, making sure the mouth piece was always on my mouth. So time to descend, this is where my problems started , with the rebreather you need to breathe out of your noise to reduce the air in the loop, well becuase my hood was far to loose everytime I breathed out my hood filled with air and started to pull my mask off, however I was descend to 6m. I thought this was a mask issue, so off with the mask and straight on with the backup and full mask clear. Sorted my bouyancy and was hovering over the platform no problem at all. We then completed a bailout to the 7ltr stage making sure I closed the mouth piece of the rebreather, and then swapped back.
We was about to go for a swim when my hood filled up with air again and the mask was being pulled off my face. I signalled to Colin that I was going up and that ended the dive.
Dive2: Well thanks to Dave from Holborough Lakes who lent me a nice snug hood backup mask on we entered to water for dive2. As my weighting was right we swam back out to the 6m platform , desended down to platform, what a difference no mask problems and no floaty hood, again I completed a quick bailout, Colin checked for bubbles and we was both OK. I then started to hover over the platform, and things were good.
After a couple of minutes swimming round the platform, it was time to test it for a bit more of a dive, so we set off for a circuit of the lake. We had a good luck around the Sweet Mystery wreck, and then followed the ropes over and round to the 10m platform, where I completed another bailout drill. and then swam back to the 6M platform where we had started from.
You just have to love these rebreather things for being so quite.
I now have an AP Valves Inspiration Classic.
