You planned ahead and are prepared for emergencies so a dingy with extra deco gas is following the team’s bubbles. But how do you signal the boat to ensure the spare gas so desperately needed will make its way down to your deco hang? The yellow Surface Marker Buoy (SMB) is the answer.

Wreck divers who dive in strong currents send up orange SMBs as a matter of course. This lets the crew up the top know where the divers are drifting as they complete their deco. But it does not alert them to an emergency down below. Sending up a yellow SMB will ensure an instant response and assistance from the crew. The chase boat can now send a safety diver down to assess the situation and bring extra O2 to your buddy. Diving deep wrecks, especially in current prone areas without two SMBs could spell trouble.

Carrying a second bag is relatively easy. Dive Rite includes a sleeve with all SMBs and lift bags. This sleeve can be mounted on the bottom of a backplate or TransPac, keeping the yellow bag out of the way until needed.

Pete Nawrocky

National Field Sales Manager

Lamar

To remedy this, we’ve created Wing Retainer Hook and Loops that affix to the wing and the harness waist belt. For the past 45 days, our Rec and Trek wings have been shipping with the necessary wing tabs and if you are interested, we can send you the rest of the hardware you’ll need to set up this system. Just send an email to us at support@diverite.com along with your full address. Shipping is free in the US. Standard shipping rates apply overseas.

A copy of Wing Retainer Hook and Loop instructions are located in our online library at http://www.diverite.com/products/library/productmanuals/

Kathleen

A checklist may depend on the dive environment. Someone diving from a boat might have a checklist different from someone walking into a spring or lake where there is more time at the surface before starting a dive.

Tom Mount and IANTD have years of experience in rebreather instruction and will soon release a pre dive/between dive check list for rebreather divers. IANTD’s lists will work for a multitude of rebreathers and they will work for the O2ptima.

Dive Rite will begin providing the IANTD checklists with all O2ptima rebreather units and we will send one to current O2ptima rebreather owners. Send us an email with the serial number of your O2ptima head and a physical address that we can mail the lists to.

Lamar

Lamar and Doug McKenna from Micropore talk about the invention of the O2ptima, the choice of the Micropore Extend Air cartridge and some of the latest O2ptima features at DEMA 2007.This video was originally shared on blip.tv by Dive Rite with a Public Domain license.

As I thought about the roll issue I thought about what my ski instructor had told me over the holidays. You adjust the boots and bindings for the type of skiing you do; the more aggressive you ski the tighter the boots and bindings should be. Technical divers need to look at adjustments the same way. Variations in drysuit and wetsuit selection can change the way your harness fits, changing cylinder sizes like heavy steels at home to aluminum 80s in Mexico changes the way your wing handles the cylinder weight and your trim.

I see more and more divers these days wearing loose waist belts and shoulder straps on their harnesses. If you ever see experienced cave divers doing long swims they wear their harness with a tight fit at the beginning of the dive and sometimes will tighten it more as they get to depth. The diver is suspended by a harness with a wing sandwiched between him and the doubles. It’s like you are a sky diver; how many sky divers would jump from a plane with a loose harness? You want to make sure the harness is tight when diving doubles so any change in buoyancy or body movement happen together and not a cascade event, when you point your body down to swim under a ledge and the cylinders join you a second later. This may not seem like a big deal, but it can cause you to get out of trim quickly and the moments it takes to recover can mean loss of control. A skier needs to know that when he moves his feet inside the boots that the boots attached to the bindings and skis react immediately or he may fall or loss control.

I have watched divers very loosely fasten the waist belt on the harness. I even had one person tell me he didn’t like any pressure on his stomach. Control is having your equipment move when you do and not a few seconds later. Look at your adjustments and check them again underwater and make sure your equipment is secure. I am confident you will have a more enjoyable dive.

Lamar

Lamar

We have been asked by some customers if we will handle service repairs on the NiTek X in-house. The answer is yes. We have computer technicians dedicated to servicing the NiTek X and will offer service in the same time frame as most of our products - 72 hours turn around.

Lamar

Feb 11, 2008

My dive required using CCR so I ran the Nitek X in CC mode and compared the decompression schedules between the Hammerhead and Nitek X. I ran a set point of 1.2 and programmed my diluent as air. I had to survey the cave out from maximum point of penetration: 4800-feet to my last station from a previous dive. The display on the NiTek X made the survey work easier because of the large depth display, plus the depth reading to a tenth of a foot.

The first deco stop was at seventy feet after 110 minutes of bottom time. Usually this is where I avoid looking at the total deco time on the Hammer Head CCR Electronics or the NiTek HE because they always show more deco time than actual deco until you get to the shallower stops. Yesterday, the Hammer Head was showing 134 minutes of deco, yet the NiTek X was showing 74 minutes. I had asked the NiTek X designers to build in some type of intuitive deco stop time. I wanted to have a real deco check at depth and penetration so I knew when it was time to come home. It works in CC mode and is being checked on a similar dive today in OC mode.

The deco countdown went like clockwork following the 74 minute schedule. I watched the CNS clock on the left of the display climb. The CNS tracking is on the left side of the screen, the 9 pixel display fills up in partial pixel display so you get a more accurate measure of the CNS clock. The NiTek He would jump a full pixel on the display for every 12.5% of use. After seven pixels on the CNS clock the eighth pixel came to life as just a line, but this pushed the CNS clock to 80% and the display started flashing. The Hammer Head deco began accelerating the total deco time and matched the Nitek X at the 30-foot stop. Both the Nitek X and Hammer Head cleared within one minute of each other.

The testing is going well. A few more tech dives are needed to verify some of the alarm features. The only way to really know if the NiTek X is performing properly is to do the dives.

I guess I need to go diving again. Lamar.

Rose Sink Dive Profile 2.8.08

Devil’s Cave System, Florida

Last Friday, I dived a NiTek X beta for the first time in awhile. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any place of note to go diving so I dropped in at our local standby; Devil’s Eye Spring. Using a conservancy factor 2 (30/75 gradient), I swam a 55 minute circuit between 90 and 100 feet of depth. The computer is easy to use; gas switches worked just as they should have. The deco matched the HE almost to the second except the NiTek X spread it between 20 and 10 ft stops where the HE merely had a 10 ft stop. So far I am quite happy with it.

Jerry Murphy

Product Manager