One of these is easy to read.
the good old "Bends-a-Matic"
Welcome to the Cave Diver's Forum.
One of these is easy to read.
the good old "Bends-a-Matic"
"Have you ever noticed
When you're feeling really good
There's always a pigeon
That'll come shiat on your hood?" John Prine 4-7-2020
"Into the blue again; in the silent water
Under the rocks, and stones; there is water underground" Talking Heads
Hey Ollie.Originally Posted by OFG-1
One of these is easy to read.
the good old "Bends-a-Matic"
Didn't you post something a while back about a DIY dive computer you made that involved a live kitten inside a mason jar duct taped to your wrist?
How did the test runs go? Is PETA still camped out on your lawn?
I currently use a Suunto Vytec as a primary. Never had any problems with it after 100+ dives.
I agree with Ary in the sense that my Duo (which I used only as a less expensive backup to the Vytec when I needed to) has been back to D.R. 3 times with less than 30 dives on it and I really don't trust it anymore as two of the 3 failures involved deco. The last time it failed I was heading into Little River and it started flickering and wouldn't stop.
I drove up to the headquarters in Lake City that day and dropped it off.
They mailed it back 2 weeks later with a $30.00 service charge.
Nothing against Dive Rite as they have good products overall but I've talked to several other people who had problems with the Duo but not the Niteks or any of their other computers.
Now I just use the Vytec, a dive watch and backup tables from a deco planner.
I'm still waiting for them to shrink the size and the cost of the VR3.
I am wondering how the new Dive Rite Nitek-X is going to compare?
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
I think the days of the DiveRite Duo flicker and die problems are over. They had a bad batch, but newer ones work great.
I have 3 (well, 2 really as one is on permaloan to my girlfriend as I hated her Aeris which had NDL's that scared the crap out of me!!). They compare well to VR3's - I have one of those - tending to give shorter deco's on the first dive and longer thereafter, but in the same ballpark.
The only sucky thing is the tendency on 20 ft stops to oscillate between yelling at you to go up (high PO2) and down (above the stop). Easily solved by faking the O2 to be 95%.
Very robust, pretty cheap, good deco profiles. Adding a deep stop on longer dives is probably a good idea - I always hang out at 70 ft and then 40 for about 2 mins each after a long Ginnie/Cow dive regardless of what the DR Duo says.
VR3 is great for trimix but not necessary for Ginnie/Cow etc dives under 140 or so. And yes their service is dicey - but it's still better IMHO than anything else out there.
Andrew Ainslie
Almost extinct cave diver
It may not be as fake as you imagine, try putting an O2 analyzer on it, it will probably be close to 95%.
That's more likely to be analyzer error than gas error. If o2 really does contain 5% impurities, it's bad stuff!!! Analyzers often either show slight non-linearity, exacerbate errors based on using moist air for calibration or have a small intercept error that causes the reading on (fairly) pure o2 to be less (or more!!) than 100%.It may not be as fake as you imagine, try putting an O2 analyzer on it, it will probably be close to 95%.
Andrew Ainslie
Almost extinct cave diver
Well, the kitputer had a cat-a-strophic housing failure at about 120 feet. It was not good. The damn cat ignored my long hose, scratched me, bit me, and well , Michael Vick would have approved of the outcome.Hey Ollie.
Didn't you post something a while back about a DIY dive computer you made that involved a live kitten inside a mason jar duct taped to your wrist?
How did the test runs go? Is PETA still camped out on your lawn?
Its back to the drawing board.
"Have you ever noticed
When you're feeling really good
There's always a pigeon
That'll come shiat on your hood?" John Prine 4-7-2020
"Into the blue again; in the silent water
Under the rocks, and stones; there is water underground" Talking Heads
You are supposed to calibrate the sensor to 100% using O2 - the O2 is pure enough to calibrate to. If you calibrate with one O2 bottle and another bottle reads off then you might have something. Other then that assume your sensor is off.
Cave Ranger, you mentioned using the Suunto Vytek. I've been thinking seriously about getting one myself (wrist unit only) and I need to know more about its performance in the field. You seem to like and trust yours a lot. Is anyone else using one? If so, I'd like to hear them chime in too. Sorry, I'm not trying to hijack the thread, but it seems as good a time as any to bring it up.
"See! If GEICO had taken THAT approach instead of saying it's so easy a CAVEDIVER could do it, I wouldn't be having an existential MELTDOWN right now!"
I bought one when they first came out several years ago. It was my first multi gas computer and I got the wrist mount version without the transducer for around $700.00. It's a 3 gas Nitrox/Air computer. It's seems to be a bit more conservative than the Duo even on it's least conservative setting. I've done over 100 dives on it including light tech dives between 135 and 190 fsw with it. It never failed or freaked out on me once. My buddy Ken got his at the same time and has had no trouble.
I bought the Duo strictly as a backup and it locked up on me the first time I tried to do a gas switch out at the Hole in the Wall cave off of Juno Beach. I sent it to D.R. and they sent me a new one and that one has been back twice. If I had just the Duo I would have gone to tables so it wasn't like I was in trouble but I know of divers who put 100% of their trust in 1 computer with no backups.
I'm not saying that the Vytec is the best and the Duo stinks. This is just my opinion but if you are asking me to endorse one over the other then based on my experience I would go with the Vytec or one of the other Suunto computers.
My only complaint with the Vytec is that the backlight could be brighter and they could have made it easier to change the battery.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
Think-!
Look.........I know I'm way behind you full cave & mixed gas divers, but one of the first things I'll be looking into acquiring prior to any advanced training is an O-2 & Mixed gas analylizer-! Just a suggestion here, referring to the many accidents using Tri-mix,Nitrox & O-2 during dives. With training comes knowledge & hopefully common sense-!
8)
Be safe guys
JE
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