Tuesday August 24, 2004

Mansfield Dam Scuba Park

This previous Saturday I dove at the Mansfield Dam scuba park with Roy and his wife. I haven't found any linkage for the scuba park's map, I'll try to scan in the map we were given at the gate. The scuba park facilities are pretty nice ( from my vast experience ). There was a small parking lot and covered shelter that services the park, and a long paved side walk and stairs that leads directly into the water. There is also an elevator for handicapped access which requires a key or something ( I'm assuming you can get it from the park staff ). Last weekend the park was pretty crowded, what with a large group ( 30 odd people ) from Houston doing their PADI Open Water Diver class as well as car loads of random other people. For the most part dive folk were friendly, especially the Houston dive instructors. I had rented a regulator for the day, but the shop missed that the inflator on my Zeagle Concept BCD has a different fitting. Roy picked up the gear, so I didn't spot the problem till we were at the lake and hooking up our gear. I was faced with prospect of diving and controlling my bouancy with the oral inflator, or not diving at all. I approached the Houston folks, hoping they might have an adapter that I could borrow. They didn't have an adapter, but they did have a spare first and second stage that they were willing to let me borrow! I was impressed with their generosity, and if you are reading this Travis, Thanks!

We got our gear on at the car, up in the parking lot, and trekked down to the water ( less than 75 yards I would guess ). I recommend just putting on all your gear but your fins up at the car, it's much easier to carry the tank on your back. The stairs down into the water have a nice sturdy railing, and the stairs end in about five or six feet of water. The dive park itself is reasonablely large, maybe 150 yards deep by 300 yards across, but I'm pretty bad at guestimating distances over water. There were four sunk boats, several platforms, and a small Cessna airplane (sans wings ) sunk at about 60 feet ( lake level at the head was 679.6 MSL ). There were various lines strung along the bottom, so it was reasonably easy to find things once you found the lines. The dive area is well marked with a number of large orange bouys as well as dive flags. And as crowded as the park seemed up top, we only bumped into two groups during the course of our two dives ( one along a line at 40 feet and a class perched on a platform around 30 feet ). Surface water temperature was a nice 81 degrees up top and we enountered a prounced thermocline around 60 feet which dipped to 74 degrees.

All in all, I enjoyed my first visit to the Mansfield Dam scuba park and I'm looking forward to diving there in the future.

-ejo

(2004-08-24 11:34:48.0) Permalink

X10: 1 Erik: 0

So in a previous entry I mentioned my triumph over an X10 appliance module by cutting a trace on the circuit board to disable local control, thereby allowing the module to control a florescent light for a fish tank. I did my testing in the daylight, and thought everything was A-OK. Wrong. One late night last week while stumbling around the darkened house, I noticed a strange flash coming from the fish tank area. It was periodic, every couple of seconds. Further investigation revealed it was indeed the tank light and I'd just subjected the fish to a week of light torture. I mostly don't feel that bad for fish, but that periodic flashing all night for days on end couldn't be good for the light or the fish. So I gave up. I found a Christmas light timer to replace the appliance module, and now it just turns on and off on a mechanical switch. Phooey.

-ejo

(2004-08-24 08:19:52.0) Permalink