Fred,
I finally got mine built and Ted and I tried it out today. It worked great! Now, it's time to upgrade the mushroom anchor to a proper bottom plate and we'll be set.
It's amazing how fast, and fun, it brings you back up from depth.
I've included the diagram I worked off of, as well as pictures of it from different angles.
Jon
Jon, that looks real good and looks like a lot of fun. How much counter weight are you using and how long is the pipe between the two pulleys? You're fortunate to be getting into the water.. with fall here and winter coming I've been working on the house constantly. I'm already dreamin' of warm water vacations. I should sneek away today and try to go diving, I bet the vis is good like in your pics.
Fred
Fred,
We played with 15 pounds on the down-line end and 30 pounds on the ballast end- it worked ok, but a little slow. Then we tried 45 pounds on the ballast end and 5 pounds on the down-line end- very fast, but hard to retrieve the ballast. I think we'll finally end up with 5-10 pounds on the down-line end, just enough to keep the line straight, and around 30 pounds on the ballast end.
Hope you can get wet today,
Jon
I almost forgot,
The cross bar is 10' long- so the falling ballast has no chance of hitting the diver when they get dragged back to the surface. I have it so that it can break down into two seperate pieces for travel.
Jon
Couple of questions for you, Jon:
(1) Do I have to take a PADI (Free)Dive Retrieval Systems Certification course to participate in the Freedive-A-Pa-Looza?
(2) When freedivers go for the really deep stuff, 500'+, how are they monitored (safety divers???)? Or are the divers on their own?
Thanks ~ Mark
MARK,
Number 1- NO.
Number 2- It depends.
When Tanya does her thing she has divers on Inspirations, and Twinspirations, up and down the line- Usually every 10 meters or so.
When Martin was doing his 103 meter constant dives, no sleds, he had safety divers evey 10-15 meters. This consisted of a primary safety diver and a back-up diver/ photographer at every station. They have lift bags, and sometimes even underwater communication gear.
Pipin had squat for his dives- and thus lost his wife in the process. He had one guy on O.C. trimix at 560' and one guy on air at 330'. He then had a couple of freedivers covering the top 100'.
Loic Leferme is now considered to be the deepest man- going for 180 meters pretty soon. He has a very different system. He is attached to the sled, so he can't fall off even if he blacks out. He stations two divers at the half way point, around 80 meters, and some surface freedivers. If he isn't back in a specific time the 80 meter divers attach a lift bag onto the rope at 80 meters and send it up to the surface. He then comes up halfway, to 80 meters, where they hook on a second lift bag and he goes the rest of the way up. It is much cheaper, but takes longer to recover. He has been doing this a long time and is still alive to tell about it.
There is another VERY different system used by a guy named "Seb" in Australia. It's called a DRUM's system. It is basically a mechanical winch set up to let out only so much line and then retrieve it again auotmatically. There are NO support divers and no lift bags/tanks involved. It shows a lot of promise in the future, but not widely used right now.
Jon