Rebreather questions

[john j]

I wanted to comment too on INSPIRATION DIVER's last post where he talked about trimix diving on Isle Royale. He described a very realistic case where each OC dive might bring 3 sets of doubles. Not only is that a lot of weight and space but expensive too. One set of doubles with a manifold probably costs $800 US or more these days. (how much is that is in British pounds Divermole? ???). So if you were thinking of getting into tech diving you might be planning on buying 3 sets of doubles eventually, plus several stage bottles too. Just the tanks alone would be about half the cost of an Inspiration. Then every year you have to have visual inspections done on the doubles which is expensive becasue you have to pay for the additional labor of taking apart the manifold and putting it back together, unless you do it yourself. When I considered all the costs of tech diving with OC, it really isn't too much more expensive to by an Inspiration. If you get bored some time, list all the stuff you have bought or plan to buy for OC tech diving and I think you may see that it isn't drastically cheaper than a CCR. I see guys sometimes at Wazee with nice trailers full of doubles and stage bottles, compressors, He and O2 supply bottles, etc. They have a lot of money tied up in all that stuff and it could all be replaced by an Inspiration which you could fit in the trunk of a compact car. When I really want to upset those OC dudes, I show up at Wazee with my small Honda Civic, pull out my Inspiration and 2 small stage bottles, put it on, do a few jumping jacks just to show how much lighter it is than a set of doubles, then I do a deeper, longer dive than the OC folks. You can really do some amazing things with a CCR.