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"Revival Vest"

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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Interesting! I would love to see some more detailed technical specifications. It is quite tiny in comparison to the FRV of Terry Maas, so I am curious what is its maximal operational depth and what lift it offers.
 
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A lot of these design competition concepts are non-functional and quite often not practical unfortunately. Hopefully this one is, but I'll wait until there is details before I spare it another thought.
 
Yes, I requested the details a few days ago, but so far did not get any reply. I susepct it is indeed a nonfunctional sample, on the photo. The concept of using HR monitor and stretch sensors raises some suspiction about the reliability as well. Knowing that HR monitors often drop the signal (especially underwater), and that under apnea, both strong bradycardia as well as arrythmia are common, I am afraid they might cause a lot of false positives. Further, from the dimensions of the device it is unclear whether it could lift a freediver from more than couple of meters of depth. The next problems are all the necessary certificates - it takes years and a lot of money to pass them all.

In the meantime, the FRV version II of Ocenic Safety Systems (Terry Maas) is getting also pretty slim and sexy, and is capable of lifting the freediver from 200m (!!) using very safe algorithm, preventing false firing.
 
Seems like we all need to live life safe and that we will all live forever!

We can’t and we won’t! :girlie

Chances of getting serious injured or die in a car crash on your road to your favorite diving spot is far bigger than your chance of dying through one of your free diving sessions! :blackeye

I have been free diving since I was a child. I have been in several near death situations (most of them car accidents) and only one of them in connection with free diving when I was only 13 and my leg got caught in an anchor rope from a small diving rib boat (not gonna bore you with the whole story), but I never had a black out!

I never overdo my breathing like some free-divers do, and I always listen to my body. If something feels wrong at only 3 meters, I stop my dive. My dive has to feel comfortable and I need to feel in control, but most importantly I think it is all down to a long life of free diving and growing up with it. Your lungs, heart and brain develops differently from those who do not free dive as a child.

Without knowing the statistics, I am sure that most accidents happen with people who begin free diving late in life! My point being that those of us who started free diving as kids we feel it as our second nature out there in the vast ocean, something you can’t program into your body and brain after your teenage years!

So if free diving is not your second nature from your childhood you should be even more cautious and spend a lot of time listening to your body, because some things can only be develop while you are growing up in your childhood!

IMHO :martial

…. and when I one day depart with this world I can think of no better and more beautiful place than in the ocean….. regardless of the circumstances!
 
tuboludo said:
Chances of getting serious injured or die in a car crash on your road to your favorite diving spot is far bigger than your chance of dying through one of your free diving sessions!
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Actually not. I just checked the stats of freediving fatalities vs. road fatalities in France, and the chances to die are around an order or two higher for freedivers. It won't be much different globally.

tuboludo said:
Without knowing the statistics, I am sure that most accidents happen with people who begin free diving late in life!
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Also not true. I do not have any numbers at the hand, but having seen hundreds of accident reports, I know very well that very often if not mostly, the victims were quite experienced freedivers or spearfishers.

Also please note, that the inventor of the Freediving Recovery Vest, Terry Maas, is one of the world's best and most experienced spearfishers in the whole history. He lost his adult son in a freediving accident, and you could barely find someone who started with freediving earlier and with better teacher than Terry's son. He died during a casual snorkeling, no extreme freediving or spearfishing.

The statistics are unfortunately full of names of people who believed they were on the safe side and nothing could have happen to them. And the DB archive is also full of blackout stories of many experienced freedivers. Some had a happy end, others not. You better read them, before starting to spread false claims.
 
Reactions: chrismar
As trux said, you are dangerously mistaken. I personally knew some of those fatalities - experienced divers with safety systems in place and thinking they were within their limits. I've rescued freedivers in the pool and ocean, as well as my spearfishing buddy when he overcooked a dive. If I wasn't there and paying attention, he wouldn't be around anymore. On the other hand, with something like the FRV, he would have stood a chance if I'd been distracted.
 
BTV, Terry's new version of the FRV, is now much smaller, cheaper, and can lift a freediver from 200m! It may be worth even for competitions, or trainings at least, including sled disciplines.
 
Okay boys, you seem to know more about this than I do. I wasn’t trying to “spread false claims”, but just explaining what I believe (or believed) to be the facts of life based on my own experiences.

You have broadened my horizon and thank you for that!

However, I must say though, that I am a little surprised that the percentage chance of a death casualties is higher in free diving than car driving???!!!

That is just God damn weird!!!

My two biggest personal fears are being caught by something on the bottom of the ocean such as a fishing net or a rope.

Or being to far out on the ocean and then is caught by the stream suddenly having a very long and very hard swim back home.

Probably so because I tried both! The latter many times….



 
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tuboludo said:
However, I must say though, that I am a little surprised that the percentage chance of a death casualties is higher in free diving than car driving???!!!

That is just God damn weird!!!
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What's weird on it? Well, the calculation is very approximative, but let's look at it - the average annual fatalities in France related to freediving are around 30 (low estimates based on documented cases, the authorities estimate the reality being double of that). It is similar in other Med countries, certainly less in Nordic lands, but the freediving populations are also much smaller there. The number of French freedivers and spearfishers is estimated to 10,000.

The annual road fatalities in France are 6.9 deads per 100,000 inhabitants. Let's say only half of the population use cars or walk on roads. You still have only around 14 fatalities per 100k road users, while at freediving we are somewhere around 300 fatalities per 100k freedivers.

Now the most weak element in this estimation is the size of the freediving population - if you count all who put on flippers and mask at least once a year, the number can be perhaps ten times higher than the estimate above (hence the rate ten times lower). But in such case you should count also practically the entire population into the road stats, because almost everyone is at risk of a road accident at least once a year. So even in such case the risk at freediving would be still quite a bit higher.
 
Don’t misunderstand me; I believe your numbers, just really surprised it is so many.

:waterwork

I guess that makes scuba diving a walk in the park then and maybe we shouldn’t encourage people to go free diving?!

 
tuboludo said:
I guess that makes scuba diving a walk in the park then and maybe we shouldn’t encourage people to go free diving?!
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There is no reason for that. It is better to educate people how to freedive safer. One of the most important rules is always diving with a skilled buddy, who watches you during your ascent and at least 30 seconds after your surfacing (that's the most critical moment of the dive). Once this is assured, the chance you die freediving is close to zero. Of course, there is much more than just that, but that's for longer writing.
 
Well, then it seems like I am living my life dangerously, I mostly dive alone and I prefer it like this!
 
Well, let's say you are (or at some point will be) diving for thirty years. Let's use the data from France mentioned above and assume that the mortaility rate is constant during all that period. Let's keep it based on the estimated 10k freedivers and 30 fatal accidents per year constantly. That would give the ratio of 30x30 : 30x10k if we had each year different 10k freedivers. That's not the case, so let's assume that each year the active freediver group changes by 20% (20% quits freediving and 20% newcomers starts with it), meaning the 10k would turn 6 times during 30 years (so 60k freedivers during 30 years instead of 300k). We now have the probability of a fatal accident of 30x30 : 60k = 0,015 or 1.5% or 1 dead freediver for each 67.

However, since you dive always alone, you are in a higher risk group. I guess that from the 10k French freedivers, 5k are actually snorkelers, who never go deeper than 4-5 meters and stay longer than 40s underwater. And there is certainly at least another 1k of them who actually never dive alone. Although some accidents can happen to these groups too, they are much less likely (lets tell 5 of the 30 annual accidents can happen to that group too). So instead of 60k freedivers in 30 years, we actually have only 30 x (10k-5k-1k) x 20% = 24k freedivers for 30 x (30-5) = 750 accidents, which give the mortality probability of 750/24k = 0.031 or 3.1% or 1 dead solo freediver for each 32, in 30 years.

Of course, all these are very wild, and rough (though educated) speculations. The available data are limited, the evolution ommitted, many parameters strongly simplified, and there will be many other factors involved, but you can get at least a raw idea where your chances are when diving alone.
 
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Well, what to do about it…. I need to go diving at least 1 – 2 times a week and where I am situated at the moment, here in Denmark, diving in the north, I have NO free-diving buddies in the area, and should I find one or two (maybe I should try harder to find some) I don’t think I will get them out in the cold water minimum once a week (but, one should never say never, of course).

And I most admit, I am a loner, I love going out to sea alone. So, you live and you die, the drive by car to my diving point always feels much more dangerous in my mind (yeah, let’s not get into that discussion again…)

Few years back I join a free-diving club here in Denmark, but it was all in-door swimming-pool training and then they go to Egypt or Greece twice a year. And since we mostly were just one or two guys with a trainer, I had a hard time taking the club serious and stopped coming there.

The area I dive in (you might have seen it on my videos) is max. depth 14 meters (one spot is 18 meters, but I need a boat to go to that point, so I seldom go there), but then again, I sometimes stay down at 14 meters for a long time for my enjoyment and/or spear fishing, so I guess it is still bloody dangerous, all though I always feel relaxed and comfortable at 12 – 14 meters… when I feel it is time to go up, I go up, I never try to force myself beyond the first time my body gives me the signal to get back up!

Once or twice a year I go to Tenerife where there are more serious free-divers and there I don’t dive alone. If you ever get to Tenerife you should check this area out mentioned in the website below. They have a nice free-diving center in the small coastal town of Tabaiba where we can free-dive just of the coastline since it gets deep immediately. Great place:

http://www.apneacanarias.com/

Here is a small video from the place so you can see how it looks like - not me in the video – and you will see the Apenaman Buoy in the video too – from the Czech web shop you once recommended me

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rJ-PezauOw&list=FLMTCLGpGlKyZNKZc6eTkkEQ&index=90&feature=plpp_video"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rJ-PezauOw&list=FLMTCLGpGlKyZNKZc6eTkkEQ&index=90&feature=plpp_video[/ame]

PS

I use a tailor made open-cell wetsuit from TEKNODIVER and TEKNODIVER’s motto is:

YOU WILL NEVER DIVE ALONE! (ha ha ha ha, but you might die alone…..)

http://www.teknodiver.com/
 
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Yes, I undestand, but for that reason I did not quite like your initial derrogative comment about the safety vest. It is exactly the type of freedivers like you who can profit from it the most and can significantly increase their survival chances. The FRV was not designed to encourage solo freediving, and Terry never do so, and still may not prevent all fatal accidents, but I guess the risk of ~3% to perish during those 30 years (and correspondingly higher for example for 50 years of freediving) would drop by several orders.
 
Well, when those things get into production and at a ”reasonable” price level (I can’t afford a Bentley), then I will have a look at it.

I would like to see some serious test documented with those Vests!!!

Because, maybe you are right. Maybe “Fuckermorons” like me should be wearing one :blackeye
 
I find the price of the FRV II already pretty attractive - 840€ is not so much for such a device, especially if you realize you get a diving computer with it for free. So it is in fact rather only something like 300€ - 400€. That's already not much more than some people spend on useless gadgets such as carbon fins, or a dozen of different masks just to see which one seals the best

As for a test - I did test the FRV v1, and it works perfectly. Had a test review ready to publish, but Terry released in the mean time a new version. The FRV II is much smaller and offers much bigger lift from greater depth. That's thanks to using liquid CO2 instead of pressurized air, which allows stocking safer bigger volume of gas in tiny containers.
 
The FRVII looks very nice and getting the price down will definitely help sell it. I'm very tempted to get one when they come out. However, it doesn't seem to have an integrated freediving computer like its predecessor. At least it's not visible on any of the pics on the website, although it says that it has the same functionality as the first version.
 
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