Good to meet you as well Stephan!
trux and everyone,
Zeagle Systems will have information on the website as soon as possible, but please realize that prior to the DEMA Show we are all maxed out trying to bring everything together at last minute. We have yet to unload the DEMA booth from our trucks, and are taking today off... a first for quite a while.
Presently I am the only freediver at Zeagle, although founder and president, Dennis Bulin, has tried the Ascent BC Belt in shallow water and has set a goal to become a freediver.
I don't pull the strings on the Zeagle website, so I set up
http://www.floridaskindiver.com/ so that I could put up photos, video and information instantly. I'll be putting up much more on an almost daily basis now that we have debuted the finished product.
The suggested retail price is $599 for everything except weights, including our new compact cross-over filler. It is available in size medium right away, with large and small to follow in about a month or so.
I have been diving many prototypes since January with a 6 cu ft cylinder. A few months later we got the compact 4 cu ft cylinders, and with one of them I get about 12 dives before needing a refill. Depth and suit thickness will vary the results, and so will the diver's experience with achieving neutral buoyancy.
Besides the DB article, (thank you very much John Liang and Stepan Whelan), the Ascent has been featured in Spearfishing Magazine's new fall issue
http://www.spearfishingmagazine.com/ and I was also interviewed on video by Tony Grogan SM's publisher. Scuba Diving Magazine TV came by for Zeagle interviews and also a Russian magazine, which I'll have to look up for the title.
To be sure this is a BC, not a PFD like the proposed FreeDive Safety Vest. And like all BCs, it will not keep a diver's airway out of the water. With normal use, floatation is provided by the automatic expansion of air, (Boyle's Law), after the diver becomes neutral at depth and begins to ascend. During most dives we have noticed the BC to be full and over-pressurizing at around a depth of 15 feet on ascent, and almost always at the surface. This matches the zone where black outs occur 99% of the time, according to Kirk Krack from PFI. With proper weighting of the BC, I have not been able to sink it once filled, even with extreme exhalation. There is a high probability that a black out victim wearing an Ascent BC Belt will remain at the surface, so this could have a profound difference in the outcome.
A freediver using the Ascent does not have to expend nearly the amount of energy that a CW freediver does, to battle positive buoyancy when descending and negative buoyancy when leveling off or ascending, and that may be the most important benefit.
Chad
