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Reasons why freediving is better than tech diving

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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SThompson

Nekton Pelagic
Apr 15, 2002
68
9
0
48
For your viewing amusement, here are a few reasons why freediving is better than tech diving. Please note the pics are courtesy of the diw crowd, the captions by yours truly.:t

diw12.jpg

"Bob thought getting off the boat was the hard part........till he had to get back on an hour later. :waterwork

diw56.jpg

"Let's see.....this hose is for 32% O2, this hose is for 28%O2, this hose is Air, and this hose is for the coleman propane grill.....err, maybe thats the last one. I always get those last two confused...."

diw57.jpg

"Right is on....NO, left is on. No wait, righty-tighty lefty loosey. Ah crap......"

diw65.jpg

"Even after ditching his weight belt Bob can't figure out why he would be descending faster than the no-limits sled"

diw01.jpg

"Anchor or diver : You Decide!"

If you would like to see all the images go here to

diw-parade
These pics are well worth a glance. All proper respect is given to the dir crowd of techies. You do what I never could because, well, that thing about the coleman camp stove would be me. :duh
 
i often see technical divers with shocking kit configurations! i look at some of them and think to myself 'you must be out of your mind'... thing is they're probably looking at me, a freediver, thinking exactly the same thing! :eek:
seeing the picture of the diver that is surrounded by 8 x 12 litres or whatever, i wondered....
a. has he ever heard of CCRs?
b. why it's not possible to pump just two cylinders to much higher pressures to carry more gas without the bulk of numerous cylinders?

there must be a good reason, otherwise it would have been done by now, but i'm not sure what it is. something due to non-linear gas laws perhaps?

alun
 
Scot,

What a great website!

I love this shot!:D

Jon
 
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This one is hilarious!:eek:

I have never seen beer cans used to put together a set of twins before!:D :duh

What will they think of next?:confused:

Jon
 
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there are storage cylinders out there at mega pressures but they are generally HUGE. I've been around tube skids which are 6 to 8 - 20ft long, 20 inch diameter monstrosities which are pressured up to 4500psi. Sometimes, for a saturation job, there will be like 6 of these skids on the boat, for massive breathing gas. Hell, on surface gas jobs sometimes the company will bring tube skids of premixed 86/14 or whatever. Other times it can be a few(8 to 20) 32packs of pre mixed breathing gas in standard storage cylinders. I just can't imagine diving with this on you. A better way might be to take a 32 pack of these bottles, attatched to a lift bag and sink them with you.
 
Ha ha! this is my favorite:
Even after ditching his weight belt Bob can't figure out why he would be descending faster than the no-limits sled"
:D Great stuff S.!
 
heres a novel idea. If you left all of that gas on the surface, then you could dive, and have a hose that supplies the gas to you. As a matter of fact, I hear that there are a few companies doing this as absurd as it sounds. So you are limited to the length of the hose, aren't you limited by time anyway?


You want tek diving?

The deepest working dive ever was in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of 1700 feet. The divers stayed in saturation for around a month. Decompression had to be a booger. You figure, 4 feet per hour in 8 hour shifts... 53.13, 8 hour shifts = 425 hours or about 18 days. Oh, and from the last 50 feet to the surface, it takes 24 hours.
 
Haha!! Hilarious stuff.
I do know that there are guys who plug the burst disc and pump the tanks up to over 5500 psi! You could cook eggs on those steel tanks when they were filling them I imagine.
Packing an extra 3 litres into my lungs will suffice, thanks.
Cheers,
Erik Y.
 
It's interesting that even non technical divers recognize the inherent idiocy of examples of "doing it WRONG" or DIW which is what that page is trying to illustrate.

Try to keep in focus that some of us will depend on these people to safety our dives at depth. However, if any safety divers arrived on the scene looking like those pictures I just might pass on my dive that day!
 
Nice pics Guys
like the tanks held together with tinny/s do you have to drink a six pack before dive? to assemble tanks sounds like good idea for relaxed diving and reduced gas consumption .
But I cant imagine why anyone would want to do this Tech diving -or any scuba except for work such as salvage etc, YOU CANT BLOODY SPEARFISH WITH TANKS OR HOOKER ETC .
(not here anyway). Why else would you go diving:D Only joking guys .
 
Originally posted by poacher
YOU CANT BLOODY SPEARFISH WITH HOOKER
Surely thats just a question of price?:D

Lots of people spearfish on Scuba, take Iya for example.

And some of those deep sea fish look mighty tasty!:D


btw Alun: Gas law

PressureA / TemperatureA = PressureB / TemperatureB

Hence the heating effect when filling a bottle and the chilling when a full bottle is opened.
 
you mean to pump a cylinder to a very high pressure, the temperature would increase much higher along with it?
well, yes, but it depends on how quickly you increase the pressure. essentially the change in pressure is related to the rate of change of pressure. i dont think that changes in temperature would present a major problem.

wait, i think i know why....

for deep diving when divers need large amounts of gas, they use trimix, heliox etc with special mixtures, that need to be accurate to within 1-2%. i think i read somewhere that it becomes much more difficult to get mixtures right in 300bar cylinders than 232s, probably due to non-linear gas laws at high pressure. this is why deep divers tend to use 232s, right?

when diving on air, you dont have to mix any gases, so in theory you could use super high pressure cylinders. BUT, when diving on air you're limited by depth, and hence your gas requirements tends to be lower. in other words, there's no need for anyone to take down super high pressure cylinders... 2-4 normal cylinders will almost always suffice.

.... so i think the reason manufacturers dont make super high pressure cylinders is simply because there is no demand for them.

how does this sound??.....
makes sense? or not?! :duh

alun
 
The main reason for lower pressure cylinders for mix diving is that helium, oxygen, argon all come in lower pressure bottles.
If you are just cascading you helium into a scuba tank you can't get much more than 2,000 psi into a scuba tank.
We use a Haskel gas booster to pump our helium up for higher fills. We don't pump up to 5,500! we usually only go to 3,500psi for total fill pressure.

We also use the haskel to pump up our argon bottles to 3,000psi- these are used for drysuit inflation only. Having the argon bottle at a higher pressure means that you can get away with a much smaller bottle- I use a 6cuft. bottle instead of a 14cuft.

The main problem with haskels is the cost, and they don't work all that well for 02. There are some 02 clean gas pumps out there, but they cost more money and have proven to not be needed for the dives we have done around here. If you start by putting in the 02 first and then adding the He you really don't need to pump 02 up.

I can't remeber for sure, but I think that 1 degree F is something like 7 psi of added pressure. As the temp drops, the psi drops. You should see how much your pressure gauge drops just jumping into Lake Superior!

Jon
 
Genius stuff, ST !! My back hurt just scrolling down the page!

Though much of my tech stuff involved breathing mxtures sent down from the barge to the chamber, I've had to pack a few tanks, thanks, and it's a stone cold bitch. That people lug themselves through caves and compaionways just goes to show that if it floats your boat...


sven
 
hi

Is that pic with the dude and about 10tanks even serious, how the hell do you even move, a waste of time I reckon.

cheers
 
i got certified for scuba,took advanced nitrox,and seen less fish,my conclusion:no bubbles no troubles!:D
cheers
aquadog
 
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