Grebo(Offline)

I've now "Seen the light" and moved over to "The Dark Side" ???? if that makes sense?

All my gear is now DIR compliant ....apart from my regs.

I use Poseidon Jetstreams, and to be honest I love them. They appear to be bomb proof and also handle the conditions we dive here in the North East of Scotland with ease.

Many of my buddies use Scuba Pro's and they've become lovingly known as "Scubaflows" after numerous free-flows whilst diving frozen quarries etc.

I've also seen Apex xtx regs get smashed to pieces on a rather rough boat ride out of Lossiemouth. The Poseidons would never have caused problems in either case.

If necessary I can also take off a second stage and give it clean or swap over on to another hose whilst underwater.

There's quite a large crew of Technical Deep divers here and loads of them swear by Jetstreams or Xstreams because of their fantastic reputation in harsh conditions.

So my question is, why are they not DIR compliant?

MarkT(Offline)

I'll be interested in the 'official' answers as well, but one thought immediately springs to mind, these are an upstream design aren't they?

So they will fail 'closed' and require a hose with an overpressure relief valve so you've got the potentail for problems with interchangability of team equipment.

Ali Fikree(Offline)

I gave up on Jetstreams because I could not find parts for them here in the UAE. Also, its nice to have regulator that takes standard hose fittings. Posiedon Jetstreams required a special hose that you could on get from Poseidon and very hard to change over on the fly ( trips).

Dont get me wrong. I have had them down to 112m and they worked great.

-A

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PBrown (Online)

I would really not reccomend this with a jetstream, a slug of water in the hose would then be forced out through the reg, this will almost certainly damage the servo needle.

I'm sure somebody will be along soon with a definative list, but this will get you started (in no particular order):
1. see above
2. They cannot be stripped underwater without tools
3. they are expensive to buy
4. servicing is bloody expensive
5. hoses are not standard with just about every other manufacturer
6. they fail shut

cheers,
Paul

Grebo(Offline)

What I'm trying to say is that Scubapro and Apeks regs seem to regulalry fail in our winter diving conditions, yet the Poseidons never seem to falter.

Price does not affect performance and shouldn't decide whether it's DIR compliant or not (Halcyon kit's expensive)

I understand that kit should be interchangeable, but if a team all dives with poseidons does that help?

Servicing can be expensive, yes. But I've seen Scubapros binned because they were completely knackered, Poseidon first stages are so simple they can be flodded and still resurrected.

Just some queries so I have a better understanding :D

Cheers for all the responses.

Greg.

Andrew Bryson(Offline)

Hi Greg, a few points from me:

The jetstreams I used to owe breathed terribly compared to my US divers or Apeks regs even when fresh from servicing. This was highlighted when diving my indie 12's I would switch off the jetstream and onto another reg - it was a remarkable difference. I found similar performance in breathing resistance when using the Jetstreams of other club members too.

I've seen Jetstreams get broken in RIBs many times (the end cap coming off). At the end of the day, most reg bodies are plastic, and can be broken easily if mistreated. It's so important to keep your kit tidy and stored properly, in particular things like guages and regulators.

The power of the purge on a jetstream is rediculous in my opinion.

I would say 90% of my diving has been around Scotland and I wouldn't ever class it as tough on any reg. Yes the North Sea is cold, but let's ask the guys from Scandanavia and Canada what regs they use? Rough seas are rough seas, regardless of where you are in the world.

andy

Grebo(Offline)

Yes, I agree that the purge on the Jetstreams is ridiculously powerful.

I also agree that North Sea diving is not too harsh, but our winter diving is often Altitude quarry or loch diving where the water is 0.5 degrees and the windchill can be easily be -20 or so. That's when all the ScubaPro divers tend to get a bit twitchy and that's even following proper Ice diving techniques.

I'm just a bit loathed to change over my single tank and my twinset to new regs as I have Jetstreams on them all. I'll have to try a set of Apeks sometime just to see how good they really are, I know the breathing on the Jetstreams can get a bit of getting used to

Thanks again for all the advice.

Santa had better bring me a set of XTX's for Christmas

Gareth Burrows(Offline)

Many of us dive all year round regularly with apeks and scubapro regs with no issues whatsoever. With regards to the "team" comment, it doesn't really help, no. The whole point is that you can jump on a boat with another DIR diver, and all your euipment, configuration, processes, signals etc are interchangeable with no issues. You might have a perfectly sound equipment configuration in your team, but if it doesn't confirm to the standard, it's aint DIR. that's not saying it's worse or better, just different from the standard.

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Anders Knudsen(Offline)

Hello,

I dive in Scandinavia all year - and I have never had an apeks reg fail on me, and never had a free flow on one ( true i lower the middle pressure, mostly because of helium in the breathing gas ).
well I don't know how the water is in Scotland, I guess you have more waves than we do in Denmark, but the temperatures can not be much lower - did a couple of dives this winter where my uwatec was reading -1C.

a good thing about the apeks reg, is that you can take it apart under water - when doing a trimix dive last week, my bottom stage reg was breathing water - just went on back gas, opened the 2 stage, cleared it from sand - and put it back together again, no problem at all.

best

Anders Knudsen

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Grebo(Offline)

Thanks all.

Anyone fancy buying some Jetstreams? No? :D

I think it will be next year before I can afford to change over to Apeks, until then I'll just have to be a str0ke :D