Midland Rebreather Diving - Roger
Where to find them: http://www.mrdiving.co.uk/
Date of review: July 2011
Price of equipment and kit: Evo Plus, ADV and Tempstick £5,300 approx. & £750 for Course
Reviewed by and their experience: Roger Wallace - Sports Diver
The Review
I've had a bit of a fascination with closed circuit rebreathers, so at the end of February 2011 I was attending the Dive Leader lectures at "The Big Scuba Show" I popped down to the try dive pool to see one of the lads from the club that was helping out on the MR Diving stand and try dive pool.
"The pools empty if you want to try out a Rebreather get in there quick!" I was in the pool in minutes and fortunately I had quite a while trying Sentinels, Evolutions, Inspirations and Sentinels again. I was blown away.
I now had much more than a passing interest so was now bombarding our clubs rebreather owners with questions, fortunately one was the training officer and one the DO. I was reading all I could find on rebreathers and watching youtube clips and anything I could find on CCR.
It was time to bite the bullet, I contacted Matt at Midlands Rebreather Diving and organised a course for early July 2011 with the choice of unit being an Ambient Pressure Evolution Plus.
The course was to be over 4 days, the initial theory at Midland Rebreather Diving's unit and the wet work at Stoney Cove. Prior to the course we had had to do quite a few weeks theory study consisting of a 98 page structured course book and 154 page Evolution manual and supplementary reading of the BSAC Advanced Nitrox notes for the gas calculations.
The unit arrived at Matt's Midland Rebreather Diving Centre just before I did, unfortunately sans oxygen cells, but the ever smiling Matt provided 3 brand new items, his only spares.
On arriving at Midlands Rebreather Diving's HQ, I met my buddy for the course, Mark.
Mark was a deep trimix diver and PSAI technical instructor to boot..! maybe I was biting off a more than I could chew.
Day 1 was a theory day based in MR Diving?s training area, running over what we had learned prior to the course and ramping up the theory quite a bit, and getting us into the mindset. My preconceived conceptions of the unit and CCRs in general were completely blown out of the water.
After we had been put at ease, made comfortable with the technology behind the unit, had verified our pre course training and learnt much more, it was time to get the crate open and build the kit. We were introduced to the unit assembly checklist and pre dive checklist, within half an hour we were out in the car park wearing our sets complete with filled scrubbers doing a pre dive breathe, checking cell outputs and scrubber performance.
Day 2 we arrived at Stoney Cove for the start of the in water training. We got set up and carried out pre dive checks and sat down for a chat and briefing from Matt, we set up off board suit inflation cylinders and 7litre bail out stages, and fitted our weights. Matt ran through a final briefing and demonstrated some drills, put us at ease and we headed for the water. To be honest I was bricking it not scared of the unit or the water but of messing it all up and it getting back to the lads.
We entered the water and did our life checks, electronics on and outputs correct, HUD with two green lights illuminated, cylinders on gauges reading pressure, inflator hoses connected.
It was time to descend, air squeezed out of wing and suit and breathing out and dumping air from the loop and we slowly descended into the quiet world of the CCR. I?d descended it might seem like nothing to a open circuit diver but I was really chuffed.
I was down kneeling on the 7M shelf with Matt and Mark and we just sat and chilled out then did a few drills, shut and remove mouthpiece, clear and get back on the loop carry out checks etc mouthpiece out, bail to auto air, bail to off board. We then had our first real swim, the buoyancy control really was not that difficult, but that was providing a false sense of security as we were finning over a very level piece of ground and we had no really buoyancy changes, we stopped did some more drills then continued to swim, our dive times were to be around the 90 minute mark, so we were getting plenty of practice and tuition. I was using 2 litre Evolution cylinders and was amazed that even with all the drills and flushes and buoyancy adjustments we were using very little gas for the amount we seemed to be blowing out.
Dive 2 in the afternoon and we started moving from level to level and that?s when the buoyancy got very difficult I had dumped everything from the suit and wing but was still travelling upward, I breathed out through my nose and nearly blew my mask off, then dropped back to a normal attitude, Matt signed that I had looked like Jordan and that I was to keep an eye on the volume of the counter lungs, keeping them as minimum as possible, that was the key to buoyancy control, effective control of the breathing loop.
I must say that Matt?s attitude put us very at ease he taught and led us through our skills in the easiest possible way, we were relaxed and taking the information in at a terrific rate not till he was happy with our progress did he take us out of our comfort zone and let us amaze ourselves that we could actually perform the drills for real in a very short space of time into our CCR diving careers, the 90 minute run times were allowing lots of practice and Matt was making best use of the time.
Each day we went deeper and changed levels more often and the drills got steadily more complex and lots of little curve balls were thrown in, if you looked too relaxed you got a huge BOOM thrown at you and I must say cylinder shut downs were much easier on the Evolution than my twin set. We dealt with too much O2, too little O2, no O2 at all, flooded loops, manually flying the unit with simulated electronics failure, changing set points and switching to open circuit with all drills demonstrated and taught underwater all done with Matt and his amazing flash cards.
The last day was test day there were no demonstrations now, it was surprise flash cards, a trip down to the Stangarth and drills at 20M and rescues followed by a 30M simulated deco dive and drills and rescues of CCR divers. By this time the buoyancy was getting a much better.
The day finished around Matts van with a debrief and run through of our weeks written theory assignment and a strip down and Buddy clean of our breathing loop and the sign off of our course and paperwork.
We had done it we had passed the PSAI CCR Module 1 course.
How do I rate the course.. well Matt was excellent, he has a way of putting you at ease but keeping your attention at all times, he teaches interactively in the water with effective sign language and some very trick flash cards and very easy to follow demonstrations so you are learning and thinking things through in the diving environment.
So what did I think of CCR diving..?? its quiet, very quiet, all you hear are a couple of mushroom valves opening and shutting, a solenoid hissing gas in occasionally. You have as much gas as you will ever need for sports diving with incredible run times even with 2 x 2 litre cylinders your constraints are now CNS and Scrubber duration and that?s 3 hours!!
What?s next?? Lots and lots of practice and diving the unit, more reading and study of the unit and a journey to become more proficient in its use and very gradual depth progression and when Matt thinks I?m ready it will be a return to the master to do the Module 2 course and get a helium qualification.