Technical Scuba Diving
(NB: This post is targeted at rebreather divers) The purpose of this post is to detail the situation when you would want to manually "vote out" a cell on a Shearwater computer and alternate solutions considered. Background The way I have my rEvo configured is that three oxygen cells are connected to the main Petrel [...]
NB: This post is probably not very interesting to non-divers. Background Believe it or not, I have recently been (gasp!) doing some rebreather dives at recreational depths, such as building a photogrammetry model of the Yukon and model of the Corsair south of Pt Loma and I have a few other projects at that depth [...]
I had recently written about the benefits of Shearwater making the SurfGF field persistent after clearing deco but was also waiting for that change to be "back-ported" to the Petrel2 hardware. I noted at the end of the article that a Shearwater support engineer said they were going to make the changes available in the [...]
Background I recently read the release notes for the latest Shearwater software release (v91) and was excited -- yes, I know, no comments from the peanut gallery. One of the standard information fields on a Shearwater computer (all dive computers really) is the NDL or No Decompression Limit field. This is the amount of time [...]
Background This article is about a "feature" in the Shearwater diver computer that I believe most people are unaware of and that is not really documented in the user manual. It is about the "Dive Plan" feature which divers probably most often use to plan a dive before they enter the water; however, it is [...]
The rEvo rebreather has a nice "bar" across the top to facilitate carrying the unit and securing it to the boat. I've seen people use all kinds of different methods to secure their rEvo to the boat. They include bungees around the 3L tanks that stick up (which doesn't seem all that secure to me), [...]
Background I thought I had posted about this modification a long time ago but was recently made aware that I had not. This post is about how I have configured the rEvo to use Air Integration pressure sensors instead of traditional Submersible Pressure Gauge (SPG) for the Diluent and Oxygen tanks. I'm not the first [...]
Diving on deep wrecks can be very rewarding, but it can also very boring during deco. Sometimes you can do your decompression on a wall or reef that is nearby but that is not very often. Most often, you are just hanging around a down line or anchor line "watching the blue go by." For [...]
Given the storms this week, I figured there was no way I was going to get into a drysuit anytime soon. But then I got a call from central dispatch (aka the wife) about a search and recovery mission! The conditions at the San Pedro Buoy are pretty grim right now and calling for 11 [...]
Background There are two types of technical divers. Those who "tinker" with gear constantly and those that ... WELL, NEVER MIND, there is only one kind of technical diver.... This post will mainly be gear related, but don't worry, there will be some pretty pictures with fish at the end! I had a business / [...]