Posted by MHK on February 05, 2001 at 16:43:01:
In Reply to: Re: CDN editorial/Ken's response posted by Mark D on February 05, 2001 at 16:27:08:
Mark,
I'm agree 100% about learning from other's mistakes, that isn't the issue that I'm objecting to..
Ken has a long history of slanting facts to suit his desired objectives and in the instant case Ken was speaking in terms of the local community ( and he has been VERY vocal about his anti-tech diving stances) and in terms if discussing the local community he said that in the last year there have been diver's that died on mixed gas, which is NOT the case..
He then went on to site, as justification for his position, that Tony died on mixed gas in NYC..
Tony's death was very heavily discussed and he did NOT die while diving mixed gas for one, but more importantly, he died while diving SOLO, inside a wreck, while testing a homemade rebreather.. I'm very good friends with the person who later recovered Tony's rig... This rig was a complete clusterfuck and the least of Tony's problems was whether or not he had mixed gas in it...
The rig was 7 tanks strung together with numerous switching blocks and weighed over 450 pounds and looked like a refrigerator. The stated purpose of the rig was to dive the Andrea Doria, however the rig was too big to get inside the Doria so the whole thing was a mess. Tony spent several years and ( I believe if I remember correctly ) over $40,000 of his own money on this rig..
The lesson here was plain and simple, don't dive solo when testing a homemade rebreather. Sadly even though Ron Fuller and I discussed this very incident and the very fact of solo diving on a homemade rebreather, Ron was found dead a few weeks later..
So I agree we should be learning from the unfortunate mistakes of other's, but Ken knows full well that he was intending to paint the local tech diving community in a harsh light..
He talks about common sense in his article, but yet get's on here and posts a * How to Solo Dive* list, but yet in the same breath will tell you that * you will die if you breath Nitrox*..
If he really wanted to discuss common sense than he should explain that ridiculous juxtaposition...
Later