[DGP]

Hi guys,

Fred Buyle just sent me a quick message about this thread and since I have always hated "reinventing of the wheel", I thought I'd see if I can offer some help on the matter of DIY fluid goggles:

A few years ago I built a pair for Martin Stepanek that he used to set his 90m record for Free Immersion in the Caymans. We had NO money for the record (as you can read in Paul Kotik's great article "Reality Czech" here on Deeper Blue) so we could not afford to buy a pair of Eric's. So we decided to roll our own.

Not being an optical engineer and not wanting to become one so late in life, I decided to find someone who could help. To make a wonderful but long story short, I managed to contact one of the world foremost optical scientists at the Max Planck Institute (Why not start at the top, huh?;-).. Anyway, this wonderful gentleman took up the gauntlet and, after a bit of computer re-programming, gave me what I needed: the part number of a cheap lens that does perfect duty in Fluid Goggles.

When they first arrived, I donned only a swimsuit, jumped in the pool, held one up to my eye and, Voila, instant almost perfect UW vision with no mask! Way Cool.

Mounted on standoffs the way I made Martin's, there is no halo/spherical abberation and the vision is wonderful. You could glue them to flat plates and that plate to standoffs but what we did was to cut some acrylic tubes into curved sections about 22m high with small notches to hold the lense edge (so they can be removed) and mounted two of these standofffs for each lens, securing them in place with non-acid based silicone (aquarium) sealant.

You MUST use high quality goggles with a flat front and real face to the lens. The ones in the picture are the older TYRs that I built with Martin.

Hope this helps!

Doug