Buoy for Deep diving

i think at that price kirk and mandy must come and train you to use it and put it together

fcallagy said:

i think at that price kirk and mandy must come and train you to use it and put it together

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Buy the counter balance system and you will get a year supply of records just for you absolutely free!
What a bargain

Hi Morten, I just remember that Lotta Ericson in Dahab Egypt has some nice bouys.
Also Hanli Prinsloo from South Africa has designed and has nice bouys manufactured for a very affordable price. I think you can contact both through DB, or asking Sebastian Naslund.

I myself use something very cheap and simple, because our waters are shallow, only 15-25m. I simply bought a sturdy yellow Skippy ball,D=45cm, made for children to sit on an jump with, attached a cheap twisted 8mm rope, a blank 'n white cone D=20cm with holes dive lamp, some weights and a little anchor to keep it in place. The buoy was E 4,95, the line was ~0,30 /M, the 'plate'/cone = 0,0 The light I already had, could be any dive lamp, the Weights I also already had, and the small umbrella anchor was found in a bay in spain = E 0,0 . Total money spend: E 12,66

I've used is several times and it's a nice line, thick enough for FI grabbing (that's a safety feature), and the buoy is very buoyant for FI and more bottom weight too.
The only thing it needs is a 'Dive-flag', to keep the sailors away who actually know what flag A stands for...

A friend of mine has made a nice CW system, based on a detectable aluminium beam hanging on two buoys separating two big pulleys carrying the dive line, plate and counterweight. He made it really durable and fancy, so it isn't cheap I estimate about E 400,- including a long 12mm HQ rope.
When you build such a system I would recommend to have the beam 1/10 of the plates' depth with an minimum of 3M.

Love, Courage and Water,

Kars.

Kars said:

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A friend of mine has made a nice CW system, based on a detectable aluminium beam hanging on two buoys separating two big pulleys carrying the dive line, plate and counterweight. He made it really durable and fancy, so it isn't cheap I estimate about E 400,- including a long 12mm HQ rope.

Kars.

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I think the E400 is too much..we used duraluminium and even with the pontoon or buoys it still wouldn't reach the price.. The only concern is the line we used the cheapest one..and i regret it it damages so easily especially when you use the counter weight to pull you up..the systems has a few sharper spots and when the line touches them it is starting to divide out..we use the 10mm line..

Kars said:

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When you build such a system I would recommend to have the beam 1/10 of the plates' depth with an minimum of 3M.

Kars.

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What do you mean in this sentence? Is the smaller beam worse or less safer?
We are still evolving our system so still asking questions to the "brains" of freediving
Cheers Kars:friday

Hi Whucash,

My friend used two big strong expensive buoys made in Germany, costing already E 90,- a piece. Than he used big HQ pulleys, stainless steel snap shackle, SS bolds to hold the aluminium beams together. The 60m rope was also HQ, ~E 1,80 / M. I'm sure one could make it a lot cheaper using different buoys, pulleys, rope.

The 1/10 of the plates' depth question.
Well you don't want to have the weight falling down getting entangled in the dive line, nor you want the weight crashing on the diver or safety diver. There for the length of your beam separating the dive line from the weight line should have a reasonable distance. I think 3m should be the minimum, sufficient to depths to 30m. Diving 10m deeper I would recommend adding 1 meter to the beam to become 4m long. Depth/ 10 = length of seperation beam, 50m /10 = 5m beam. It's also dependent on the amount of current, and in a small way to the amount of weight used.

Also at the end of the dive line it's better to have a small CONE like 'plate'*, white tennis balls, hockey ball?, to avoid it swivelling to the side when pulled up. For the weight I recommend a rounder droplet like shape, avoiding splitting headache to a diver when he does get the weight on head.

Positioning the whole system in a good angle to the current is another thing to keep in mind, as well as varying current directions at different depths.

Love, Courage and water,

Kars

*cone could be made of a big paint lit.

View attachment 22139

This is the old reel we had.

One point to make is we have two buoys and each is attached to a metal bar by Karibiners and then the line is attached also to the bar meaning that the reel is redundant apart from storing rope, it couldn't break and cause a problem.

The two buoys together are an important part of our original safety system because you can lie between them with a snorkel in and lift the line hand over hand to pull up a diver wearing a lanyard on the line. I have practiced this loads and we can pull up at easily over 1 metre per second. With one buoy only this would be very difficult.

$8,995.00 for the counter balance that is expensive indeed!! I would like to know how much the materials cost to make it yourself. They must be expensive looking at the final cost. Does anyone have the plans for that particular set up to aid us poor freedivers in the pursuit for a reliable safety system. Maybe a few pictures of it set up in the water too?

I found this

http://forums.deeperblue.com/freediving-equipment/76534-surface-rig-portable.html



Ola.

E 400,- Euro = about $ 600,- USD I think now. Maybe our writing cultures created the error, in Europe we use the comma to mark the line between whole numbers and decimals.
Points we use to separate 3 consecutive numbers.
Exemple: USD $ 1,000.99 => Euro E 1.000,99

As the currencies are being devalued, our savings get halved by the big bank robbers, you'll find that those higher numbers of yesterdays prices seem to become cheaper.
But than again, you'll find that buying the necessities is already eating up almost everything.

Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

Kars said:

Hi Whucash,

My friend used two big strong expensive buoys made in Germany, costing already E 90,- a piece. Than he used big HQ pulleys, stainless steel snap shackle, SS bolds to hold the aluminium beams together. The 60m rope was also HQ, ~E 1,80 / M. I'm sure one could make it a lot cheaper using different buoys, pulleys, rope.

The 1/10 of the plates' depth question.
Well you don't want to have the weight falling down getting entangled in the dive line, nor you want the weight crashing on the diver or safety diver. There for the length of your beam separating the dive line from the weight line should have a reasonable distance. I think 3m should be the minimum, sufficient to depths to 30m. Diving 10m deeper I would recommend adding 1 meter to the beam to become 4m long. Depth/ 10 = length of seperation beam, 50m /10 = 5m beam. It's also dependent on the amount of current, and in a small way to the amount of weight used.

Also at the end of the dive line it's better to have a small CONE like 'plate'*, white tennis balls, hockey ball?, to avoid it swivelling to the side when pulled up. For the weight I recommend a rounder droplet like shape, avoiding splitting headache to a diver when he does get the weight on head.

Positioning the whole system in a good angle to the current is another thing to keep in mind, as well as varying current directions at different depths.

Love, Courage and water,

Kars

*cone could be made of a big paint lit.

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The stainless steel is a very expensive material even used for small parts..when i read your description i start to understand why ours was cheaper..the pulleys are wheels without the robber on them so made from normal steel this is the worse element..plus the buoys..one is in the price of ours pontoon and the line as i mentioned before is the cheapest one in the whole shop and we will change it for the summer..
As for the other details we used the best materials as we could..so the aluminium is a good quality and the shackles are the best we couls find beacuse they have to be so..

As for the beam our is a bit different..the weight is placed on a small wheel between the reel and the part of rope that is connected to the aluminium construction so that when a diver is pulled out..the line on which the weight hangs is twice shorter than the diving line and it goes 2 times slower than the diving line and because of this it doesn't float in different dimentions.. It sounds complicated but it is much easier to understand what i have ritten when you see a picture or a drawing..i'll try to add somenthing to show what i mean..

As for the plate..at the beggining we used normal aluminium plate but when going up it was floating all over the place, slowing down the pulling-up opertion..then we changed to a plastic plate with a lot of holes in it and a 1kg weight connected to it..thanks to the holes it stays in one line and because of the weight it isn't pulled anywhere..

We are diving on lakes co teher isn't almost any current expect when wind is blowing but it happens rarely and normally the rain is falling so we do not dive in such conditions..

And we made a few tets before connecting a living creature to the machine..we pulled up a dumy from 30m wihout any problem..and one of us from 25m without any problems..at the beginning the beam was a concern but after a few pullings there wasn't any danger taht the weight will "touch you a bit harder tahn expected"

I have to make some closer photos of our counter weight to show how exaclty it looks like.

Great system whucash...

We also have the same problems of poor visibility making dives unsafe without proper safety systems. Please post more pics if only possible. I´m already designing a similar system for our diveteam.