Posted by tleemay on April 10, 2001 at 14:36:49:
In Reply to: Re: Err, umm, excuse me but, ahhh, my experience is... posted by Steve on April 09, 2001 at 23:18:15:
Perhaps I was not clear, so I will quote what I
wrote in the post you are responding to (speaking
as a third party from MHK);
"...where you spoke about AIR2 types of devices
and why they are (A) not needed, (B) restrict your
overall head movement, and (B) were prone to
failure."
I'll define further -
That says to me that they are an added expense ($
that could have been better spent on other
equipment); do not allow you to have full and
unrestrictive movement left to right or allow you
to easily remove your BC underwater without
contorting your neck and head close to the LPHI -
keeping your head to the left during removal; they
leak or freeflow, especially when used 7-10 dives
per week over a period of several months - I have
other regs as backups that absolutely do not require
rebuilding even after 2 years of the same diving
frequency.
Those are the above reasons why DIR does not like
ANY LPIH circuit mounted device outside of the
backup reg systems - AIR2, TUSA Zeagle's like product,
Sherwood's Shadow+ - and those other little gizmos,
bells and whistles like DiveAlert, Rattle-Alert, etc.
They induce potential failure points and relagate
you to manual inflation of you BC or wing. If for
some reason a full back-up reg was to fail, you
still have the ability to fill your wings without
manually breathing into them.
The only thing good I see in the initial design and
subsequent Gen2 versions of the original AIR2 is
that the inside of the reg is basically based on
the tried and proven R-190, which is an easy reg
to service. It allows the service techs to keep a
fresh supply of readily available R-190 parts for
the AIR2's that come in (there are other parts
that are not interchangable and specific to the AIR2
also).
The disconnect you speak to is the typical regular
ScubaPro LPIH connect. Easy to handle, larger in
diameter They have been fairly common on ScubaPro
AIR2 products for some time now.
You are right on one point though, it is an
ingenious product - from a marketing standpoint.