adrian.brown(Offline)

I don't mean to start this thread up just for a ruck, but im sure it has'nt escaped most of our attentions that mojority of the tech community have moved over to SCR & CCR or use it on a regular basis.

On all the big pushes and explorations the SCR & CCR seems to have taken over from open circuit, certainly most of the WKPP and EKPP push explorations are done on the RB80 mSCR now, I personally see both rebreathers as a tool that has its uses and have two guys I dive with on a regular basis on deep dives who use Sentinel eCCR's without any issues to me and my open circuit buddy.

As helium gets more expensive especially in remote areas or not so remote such as Scapa I can see the benefits when I have a £ 300+ gas bill for a week of diving and the other guys on CCR walk away with nearly half that. Or when sea dives as they often do get blown out and your left with £ 60 quids worth of mix that you would'nt want to blow off in a quarry.

Now as mCCR's move on and become to a certain extent ''safer'' by utilising a HOG compliant setup by this I mean the use of a one piece harness and open circuit long hose bailout configuration, in your own opionions do you think in the future we will embrace the CCR into GUE community as a complaint tool I don't mean for the average recreational dives in the 30 metre range but for the U.K >70 metre and beyond channel dives.

Or do you think that open circuit will remain the tool of choice even for the deeper open water stuff, as I said before I see S & CCR being a tool which I do not have a need for. But I am a bit concearned if we don't look at other aspects of diving equipment we could be left behind and seem even more elitist by the diving community.

As I said before im not trying to cause noise im just looking for truthful responces.

Thanks Adrian

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JohnKendall(Offline)

The RB80 is a Semi-closed rebreather, not a CCR.

Bit of a difference

HTH

John

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adrian.brown(Offline)

Sorry John yes I stand corrected but I did really mean to ask the question for both SCR & CCR.

Thanks

Adrian

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Ben Curtis(Offline)

How much gas do you need to breath from a cost perspective to break even with the cost of buying a rebreather and getting adequate training???

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Mark S(Offline)

I dived (and taught) eCCR for about five years and switched back to OC at the end of 2004.

From that perspective I would say that OC is far easier, less complex with regard to logistics and probably cheaper unless you are doing quite a few mix dives per year (taking into account initial setup costs, O2 cells and sorb).

I also find that I enjoy the dive a lot more when diving OC as there is far less time spent monitoring, keeping the team together is easier and generally the dive is far less stressful.

I have mates who did their entry level and trimix CCR courses with me who are now doing some pretty amazing depths & durations on CCR which simply couldn't be realised on OC. These divers, however, do not carry sufficient OC bailout to perform a full OC ascent including all their decompression when conducting these dives.

And therein lies the problem; diving deep in open water on a CCR is logistically very easy and the possible run times are incredible with very little gas cost. Carrying sufficient OC bailout to complete the dive in the event of a catastrophic failure is very difficult once depths exceed 70-80m unless doing short bottom times. It could be improved with a 'team-bailout' strategy but this requires a great deal of training and a certain level of standardisation which is currently lacking in the vast majority of CCR divers.

So if it comes down to costs; if you believe you will complete sufficient gas dives to make the switch to CCR worthwhile, with several CCR buddies available and a standardised set of bailout strategies and are willing to put up with the increased failure modes, increased task-loading, increased prep-time and the additional costs of the accessories which most CCR divers seem to accrue then go for it.

If I went back to CCR now it would probably be an mCCR with a similar setup to UTD's, i.e. backmounted OC bailout to enable me to switch between OC and CC with the minimum of fuss. I don't think the Meg is a particularly good choice of unit for a number of reasons, nor do I see their overall setup as the simplest way to configure such a unit.

I am, however, quite impressed with the JJCCR.

I must say that I still find the CCR attractive but will continue to resist for the simplicity despite the limitations of my OC rig.

Can't really comment on SCRs as the only ones I have experience of are Dragers & the Azimuth, both of which are pretty useless and horrible to reconfigure into anything resembling a decent mixed gas setup.

Anyway Chasey'll be along in a mo to share his thoughts (maybe he'll bring a graph?).

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adrian.brown(Offline)

You ask most CCR divers that question and they take training and unit costs aside and always argue gas cost, logistics and waste outweigh training and buying the latest kit.

After all you've got to train to an advanced level on open circuit to touch sub 100 metre depths anyway.

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sacra(Offline)

I can't speak for the UK. I see some people diving all types of rebs over here and also see people changing from OC but I don't really have the impression that it is the majority of technical divers. I definitely can see a growing hype around it. Maybe that is also the reason for your post?
I also have the strong feeling GUE is soon going to release a statement on (C)CR and I wouldn't wonder if you see the one or other well know GUE dude test one of those magic machines.


I think that's never really going to amortize (I got the rethorical question) unless you spend every second day going deep.
I also can't really see any increase in safety for the open water diving if you are not going 90+. For cave diving that might be different.
The only draw on it for me is all that fancy technology. And to be honest... it looks cool (rule #6).

adrian.brown(Offline)

I totally agree with you Mark O.C is by far the simplest way to go and im sure if I ever whent closed it would'nt be long before I whent back to open circuit as I could'nt be doing with all the messing with setup etc.

I do believe from the guys I know that some tech agencies are advising a third bailout on deep stuff but once again unless strong team strategies are in place it all goes out the window when the sh** hits the fan but this conversation is for another time and place.

What im after is do people think that in the future the GUE will see S & CCR as an optional tool not just for the big pushes but for the dives in between.

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lizardland(Offline)

I hope GUE does adopt CCR as it will be interesting to see how the courses stack up. One thing the more mainstream world suffers from is the complete lack of consistency.

I think I worked it out at about forty 60m+ dives.

I think the UK is different, there are a lot of CCR divers here. I've seen three open circuit trimix divers on the boats I dive on this year, every one else has been CCR. Possibly on the south coast it's different but I just don't see open circuit divers doing mix dives up here. The guy who owns my local shop said he does one twinset of mix a month if he's lucky, everything else is either RB bottles or storage cylinders.





I don't think that's particularly unusual. Last week I did my first dive less than 50m since April. Certainly this side of the pond, people who are regularly doing mix CCR dives are doing depth every week.

To me, I set the bar at 50m. Below that then (to me) the advantages of CCR far outweigh OC. Shallower than 40m then without a doubt I prefer OC. At 40-50m then it's a big grey area and it'll probably come down to whatever is convenient.

I actually prefer OC in caves. The thought of getting a CO2 hit underground scares the crap out of me.

About a million times cooler than a twinset

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Ben Curtis(Offline)

You ask anyone who has spent £8.5k on equipment and training and I'll pretty much guarantee they'll justify it some how to you.

From a cost perspective I don't think there is any argument they cost more to anyone except regular exploration cave divers.

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