Quote: (Originally Posted by
Howard Payne)
So if it's not an issue - how do we account for two highly respected divers having hypoxic incidents on the RB80 recently?
I'm a new RB80 diver but the recent incident made me think long and hard (I was there when it happened and don't take stuff like that lightly I assure you). If we deviate from proceedure the RB can be a dangerous thing indeed - but so can any RB or OC kit for that matter.
Switching to OC or richer gas shallow is a necessary part of RB80 diving, in the same way that we have to do when diving hypoxic back gas on OC. I've jumped off boats with hypoxic regs in my mouth, it's not proceedure to do so but I guess complacency made me make what was an essentially poor decision. Some have descended on SCR mode on in inappropriate gas using an RB80 or clone. That's not proceedure either.
Unlike Cyrille, I
do believe that Rebreathers are dangerous. I have a gruding respect for the RB80 which has been designed as an intuative unit which is easy to get to know at a basic level. Just like OC you have to know your MOD and the bottom out fraction of O2 that your depth will give you. In addition to OC porceedure, you have to monitor depth to confirm that the FO2 does not drop below that which is acceptable. Adding bells and whistles which take away from this just seem to me to pass the buck from the diver to the unit which would lead to a greater possibility of failure. After all, we've seen enough CCR divers die after failing to turn on their O2 or dilluent - having posh alarms and buzzers doesn't safeguard from us accident it should merely confirm that these are not recreational tools and should not be used unless there is a training or a dive requirement for their use.