Wednesday September 01, 2004

Windy Point Park

Setting The Scene

The parks grounds are clean and well kept, and overnight camping is available. The camp grounds are fairly unstructured, you seem to pretty much pitch your tent whereever strikes your fancy. There are firepits strewn about, but we found evidence of some brainiac building a fire between the boles of two live oaks. There are also a fair number of sturdy picnic tables on the grounds, as well as "facilities", a changing room and a non-potable water shower.

Off the western shore of the park, there is a very nice scuba park with alot of random sunk objects to find. This weekend we visited the Pinto in 82 feet of water and everything else on the map except the manatee and out-of-service platform.

New Gear

In a burst of unchecked consumerism, I invested in some new scuba gear: an Atomic Aquatics Z1 Regulator and SS1 Safe Second, a Aeris Atmos Elite hose-less air-integrated dive computer, a set of Force Fin Pro Force fins, and a new true color frameless mask ( I can't remember the manufacturer ).

Atomic Aquatics

The real reason I decided on an Atomic Aquatics Z1 first and second stage regulator was because I dove a borrowed M1 and fell in love with it. I bought the Z1 because it was in my budget and because I couldn't find anybody that would say anything bad about Atomic regulators (beyond that they were expensive). The best sources of opinions I found were on Scubaboard.com and ScubaToys.com. ScubaToys wasn't so much a source of opinions, but did have an excellent article which explained what a pneumatically balanced regulator is and why they are desireable.

I chose an Atomic SS1 Safe Second ( a power-inflator/regulator ) due to reviews and it seemed best to have matched regulators so I didn't have to take them to seperate shops to get serviced. The SS1 also allows me to reduce the number of hoses connected to my first stage regulator by one since it combines the my secondary reg with the power inflator for the BC. Maybe not the choice for technical diving or DIR folk, but a reasonable choice for a recreational diver like me.

Both the Z1 and the SS1 breathe like a dream. I've taken them to 87 feet so far, and they breathed the same at depth as they did at 10 feet. I was able to stop the Z1 once while swimming down hard, but I haven't been able to replicate that. Beyond that one glitch, the Z1 has delivered dry air in pretty much any orientation I could come up with ( summersaults, face up, head-down inverted, on my side). The SS1 breathes as well as the Z1 ( and would probably breath better than the Z1 if it wasn't detuned to prevent occasional free-flows on entry or current ). The buttons for the inflator and dump are large and easy to differentiate even when wearing gloves. Mine has yellow buttons and purge cover, and they come in red and blue as well.

The only thing that I'm vaguely dissappointed in is that neither the Z1 or the SS1 comes with the Atomic "Comfort" mouthpiece. You can purchase one for $12 seperately, but it just hadn't occurred to me that they would come without Atomic's signature mouthpiece. Speaking of accessories, I also added the Atomic comfort swivel and M1 exhaust tee to my Z1. The swivel reduces the tug from the hose and increases your mobility, while the exhaust tee directs your exhaled breath out and away from your mask and mostly out of your line of sight. I'm happy with these additions, although sometimes my exhaust would bubble past my ears.

Aeris Atmos Elite

My Atmos Elite came from the shop already linked up with it's transmitter, so I didn't have mess with that ( each transmitter has an individual code so that any number of Atmos Elites can operate in close proximity to each other without interfering ). All that remained was to read the manual and get it wet.

I'm pretty happy with the computer over all. The display is big and easy to read ( when your mask isn't fogged up ), and the buttons are big and accessible. I'm alittle disappointed with the backlight. It was dimmer than I hoped it would be. It would be readable in complete dark, but in the murky dark of 60 to 80 feet in Lake Travis it was not bright enough to read without external illumination. Other than that, it keeps track of a multitude of diving data and presents it well to the diver: depth, temperature, tank pressure, elapsed dive time, estimated air time remaining, automatic safety stop timer, ascent and descent speed, nitrogen loading graph, O2 loading graph, and date and time. The computer allows you to set several alarms: maximum depth, turn around tank pressure, and minimum tank pressure. When an alarm triggers, the computer gives an audio cue (it beeps) and flashes a red LED in time with the beep. The computer will also issue alarms for lots of other conditions which require the divers immediate attention, the most serious of which is entry into decompression mode where the diver will need to make a series of decompressions stops on their ascent in order to avoid decompression sickness (the "bends").

Post dive, it will display your current surface interval, your estimated nitrogen load, minimum elapsed time before you should fly, and access to logs for your previous dives. It will also give you a dive planner which can help you plan your next dive by inputing a depth. The computer gives you a bottom time that is calculated from your current surface interval and nitrogen load from previous dives. Some people claim that the algorithms used by this computer are "aggresive", which I take to mean differs from the US Navy dive tables for recreational divers. I suspect if you dive this computer to the hairy edge of it's estimates you could get yourself in trouble, but the same is true of the dive tables.

The computer stores 24 dives before it starts overwriting older logs, and you can buy a cable to connect your dive computer to a personal computer with USB ports. I'm still waiting on the cable, so I can't really comment on what data is available.

So far, I really like my Atmos Elite.

Pro Force Fins

There is nothing like the subject of fins to raise the hackles of veteran divers. And people seem to either love or hate Force Fin brand fins. Roy had a pair that he let me try, and I decided to give them a chance. My previous fins were Tusa straights which I liked well enough, but I liked the compactness of the Force Fins. I tried the Force Fins first in a local pool and found that without my gear on I didn't really like how they kicked on the surface. Below water though, they felt great! With my straight fins, you really could feel resistance of the water on your fins as you kicked. The Force Fins had far less drag so you feel almost like your kicking with a bare foot. Apparantly it's that feeling that drives some divers to distraction, but this weekend in the lake I adjusted to them within a couple of dives. After this weekend, I put my initials on them and put my straight fins in the closet.

New Mask

I'll write more about the mask when I can identify it by brand and model. I liked it after it stopped fogging up on me, and seemed much more comfortable than my previous Tusa mask.

UPDATE: My new mask is a SeaDive. FYI.

-ejo

(2004-09-01 14:07:13.0) Permalink