oceanic atom and seadoo scooter

oceanic atom wireless transmitter and seadoo scooter:
the two don't seem to like each other.


when the seadoo scooter is running the transmission link is lost on the dive computer.This happened consistently throughout one night dive. Will experiment with this again soon, but it was quite clear that some sort of electrical noise from the scooter engine disturbs the atom transmission.

as soon as the scooter's engine stops, the interference stops and the computer finds the signal again. This happens even when the scooter was to my right side (was sharing the scooter with my buddy at the time) and the atom was on my right wrist.

i will try to experiment with my dive buddies a bit more and see how close the scooter needs to be to disturb the transmission (when someone else is using the scooter).

Sea & sea DX-1G

The new sea&sea DX-1G seems to be available now. it sells for about $1k USD in adorama.com and bhphotovideo.com, which includes camera and housing. good things about it that i can see:

1. wide angle at 24
2. housing looks nice, can attach wide angle and macro lenses to it directly, and has twin fiber optic cable connectors/sockets on it
3. hotshoe
4. RAW
5. possible to use a weird LED flash on the hotshoe and use that to drive external strobes (zero recycle time)
6. can use standard AAA batteries as well

bad things about it that i can see:

1. expensive, very expensive. almost double the price of a nikon P5000 in a fantasea. for the price of a sea&sea DX-1G you can get a nikon p5000, a fantasea housing, and a fisheye wet lens.
   
2. the camera (which seems to be something like the ricoh GX100) does not seem to be getting good reviews in general. here is a review from dpreview.com that gives it an overall rating of just recommended. some problems with the camera according to dpreview.com were the following:
   • high noise levels, high ISO unusable
   • Very slow focus in macro mode in low light (also at the long end of the zoom but who cares about that)
   • highlight clipping
     

Camera options (for me) at the time are the following:

• sea&sea DX-1G, $1000 USD
• Nikon P5000 in a fantasea housing about 550USD
• new just announced nikon P5100- seems to have the exact same body as P5000 so should fit in the same fantasea housing
  
• Canon G9 in an ikelite housing $1200 USD (i guess) plus extra 85USD for the shorter ikelite port if the whole setup is similar to the G7
  
• Olympus E-410 or 510 (dSLR) in an olympus housing $1700 USD

I think the nikon p5000/5100 is the best choice for a compact camera at the time.

the four cylinders

photo of four cylinders, from left to right: catalina 95cf@240bar aluminium, Luxfer SO80 80cf@207 bar aluminium, catalina 40cf@207bar aluminium, faber 40cf@232bar steel

new catalina cyinders

two new catalina cylinders from diveimports.com, ordered today:

• catalina 95cf 240bar 17.1kg with a DIN/K valve for 325AUD. estimated buoyancy is about +1kg empty (no valve) almost the same as a faber 100cf/12.2lt ( 13.1kg cylinder would be around +1.2kg empty)
• catalina 40cf 207bar 7.1kg sherwood K valve 279AUD, +1.2kg buoyancy empty (estimated)

cylinder buoyancy characteristics

calculate cylinder buoyancy characteristics at this website

seriously

this oceanic atom interface has to be the crappiest interface on a dive computer.
i can only compare it to ericsson mobile phones (before sony). seriously crappy.

the manual is 150 pages maybe i should laminate it and take it with me diving.

maybe there is a reason that those suuntos are a bit more expensive after all...

cylinder manufacturers

a short article on scuba cylinder manufacturers

http://divemar.com/NAUI/docs/sources/cylinder-history.html

those russian titanium 6000+psi/415bar cylinders sound good. i bet most sydney dive shops would still give you 200bar fills on them anyway.

servicing regulators: ok i dont get this

even if i wanted to make sure my regulators were serviced often (say every 2-3 years) why would I ever service them? it makes no sense, given that my regulators are not terribly expensive, and i'm very happy with them.

i bought my oceanic gt3 regulator (first second stage) for about 270AUD delivered. actually it was less than that, but if i had ordered just that one set of regulators that would be the price with shipping.

getting it serviced would be around 200AUD. what the .... ?

why on earth would i ever do that?? i would guess i can sell it on ebay for more than 100AUD. add to that the 200AUD i would pay for servicing it, that's a new regulator set. not only do i get a new/"serviced" regulator, i also contribute to satisfying my buy-new-dive-stuff appetite.

why would i ever service my regulators?

so there are two things i could do:

1. never service my regulators. every now and then open them up and ... close them back again without doing anything. i think this seems to be the experienced diver's choice. this is called "servicing my own regulators". to be more precise, "servicing my own regulators" is a bit more involved: first download service manuals and instructions from the web. then open and close your regs without doing anything to them and, of course, ignore the service manuals.
   
2. every year-and-a-half buy a new set of regulators and sell an old one. i have two sets of regulators; so i would need to replace each set every 3 years. this would probably get me a reasonable price on ebay. with a replacement cost of say $300, $100+ recovered from selling regs on ebay, thats about $130/year or so on regulator "service". of course i could replace my regulators much less frequently but that wouldnt help enough with my buying-dive-stuff condition.
   

i will go with choice (2) for now.

diverite canister light

Dive Rite 10-Watt HID, 4.5-Amp NiMH SlimLine Canister (4h burn time) or 9.0-Amp NiMH Wreck1 Canister (>8h burn time), two options for the light head, Compact MR11 HID Light Head, or Compact H10 HID Light Head.

prices: 565USD (small canister and MR11 head plus a plastic carry case) or 675USD (big canister MR11 head including the plastic case). light bulbs are about 150USD. battery packs 160/273USD. the H10 lighthead is about 100USD more expensive than the MR11.

The H10 light head can be focused, the MR11 has a narrow focused beam (6 degrees). The small canister has 9in/23cm length and 2.6in/6.6cm diameter, weighs 3.5lb/1.6kg and has buoyancy -1.25lb/-0.6kg. Large canister is 10.5in/26.7cm long, has 3.5in/8.9cm diameter, weighs 6.5lb/2.9kg with buoyancy -2.5lb/-1.1kg.

all specs and photos from the diverite website.

some related links about canister dive lights

• article from diveoz
• northern diver 10W HID torch review from diveoz
• build your own canister light from pcmus.com