Technical Scuba Diving
Intro Tyler and I had been planning a trip to the Coronado Island with Lora at Marissa Charters for a very long time. It was deferred at least 2-3 times due to weather, unplanned trips, etc. We finally got down there in early February 2026. Tyler had a friend who had seen an airplane wreck [...]
Introduction We first located and identified the P-38 off Solana Beach back in 2022 and I published a series of posts about the wreck, including a "basic" photogrammetry model. I've been back a couple of times but it was always with a few other divers which makes building a photogrammetry model tough. In that time, [...]
Introduction If you have been following along, we have been trying to find the S-3 Viking that crashed off Point Loma in 1978. A brief rundown of previous posts: Original AUV Search Second AUV Search First Day of Dives - Mystery Plane First Day of Dives - Wing Section Second Day of Dives Third Day [...]
Introduction Sometimes readers only see the big successes and don't realize that we do a fair number of dives that don't result in finding a new airplane. We have been diving targets in search for the Ables S-3 Viking for quite some time. We recently conducted some additional Iver3 AUV scanning with UCSD on board [...]
Background NB: This post was written a while ago and we have made more progress so I wanted to get this published before I publish some additional updates. 🙂 We have been searching for a S-3 Viking for years and recently conducted two days of searching with UCSD/Scripps using their Iver3 AUV and then did [...]
As part of our search to find the Ables' Viking, we had a bunch of targets to dive (shown in the diagram below). On previous dives, we had identified a Wing Section (green pin in the diagram) that might be from the S-3 Viking and a debris field of a WW II Airplane (one of [...]
Introduction As part of our project to find the Ables Viking, we did some AUV scanning with UCSD/Scripps and one of the targets identified was what looked to be a debris field. A diagram of the possible targets is shown below. The initial search grid was about 1 square kilometer and was based on a [...]
Introduction On June 8, 2025, there was a tragic and fatal airplane accident in the ocean 3 miles off Point Loma, California. A twin engine Cessna 414 had problems almost immediately after takeoff. According to recordings with the tower, the pilot was having trouble and struggling to maintain altitude. The tower was directing him to [...]
Background The Missile Tower is an artificial reef created from an old Trident missile testing tower. It is very close to the US/Mexico border and sits in about 160 feet of water. It is a popular dive site for technical divers and is commonly used for training classes since it is big target and it [...]
Intro One of the tools that I have been using and experimenting with is an Insta360 x4 camera. They make a few different cameras but the one I have has two spherical cameras that face outwards and is used to film a complete 360 view video. Photos of the x4 from the Insta360 Website The [...]
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