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Thread: Caribb-LEM Mark III, March 1st-11th of 2017 (or March 4th-11th if you want 7 days)

  1. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by HankLloydRight View Post
    it was on those days we had to do the final exercises for our Open Water tests.. it was not pretty AT ALL. I had to simulate "out of air", CESA(?) to the surface and manually refill my BCD... but every time I tried to do that, I got a 3-5ft wave right in my face and a mouth full of sea water... all the while treading water since I was negatively buoyant. It took a while, but man oh man, was it hard and very stressful.
    Bitch, please!

    Try surfacing an un-responsive diver, then towing his ass 300 + yards on the surface through 5 ft seas that are breaking over your head while you try to rescue breathe for the guy every 5 seconds. Now go do it again!

    My final check-dive for my rescue certification damned near killed me and my "patient", Zach. Normally it would never be done under such rough conditions, but the way Grace (my instructor) figured it: if I could do it under those conditions, I could do it any time. OK, I see her point, but fuck me it was exhausting. I earned that cert for damned sure...

    Quote Originally Posted by neutrino View Post
    I thing we should set a date to have a Google Hang out or similar for all those that have booked. This was I can answerable the questions. I hate typing!!
    Google Hang-out or Skype... Either one works for me! But yeah, good idea. Maybe in another week or two?

    Quote Originally Posted by telmnstr View Post
    I'm flying on something that charges like $25 per checked bag. I could maybe bring a pluto II but I would have to carry it out of the case
    No need for another 2 or 3 watt projector. We've got enough of those on the island already. We need higher-power units to make the outdoor shows really pop. Although I admit that 25 bucks for a checked bag is a steal. Maybe you can work a deal with Brad so he takes your stuff and you take his projectors?!? But you would need to ensure the projector didn't get bounced around. As a carry-on, you can control that, but not if it's checked. So it would probably need to be in a case of some sort...

    What about haze on Island?
    If we do anything indoors they have a couple foggers on the island already. For outdoor shows we light bon-fires and lay palm fronds on the fire. Smoke is better than fog!

    Adam
    Last edited by buffo; 02-02-2017 at 06:20.

  2. #82
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    Bitch, please!

    Try surfacing an un-responsive diver, then towing his ass 300 + yards on the surface through 5 ft seas that are breaking over your head while you try to rescue breath for the guy every 5 seconds. Now go do it again!
    Ok, Grandpa... you had it worse than us. You had to swim 300 yards upstream BOTH WAYS!!!

    But, yeah..it was even more fun to watch!!!

  3. #83
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bradfo69 View Post
    They are considerably heavier. I don't have the spec's in front of me but say a Pluto is 25 pounds, the Ascent is at least 40. In the flight case definitely over 50 and would have been something like $100 each way as a checked bag. It just barely meets the space requirements for a carry on, provided you remove the yoke which I did and put it in my suitcase. I basically got a folding luggage carrier with wheels and bungee corded it to that. Fine for walking around the airport although escalators are tricky. A pain to wheel down the aisle of the plane and worse holding people up trying to board as you unfasten it and try to carefully get it into an overhead bin. Pluto would be MUCH easier and might even be fine as a $25 checked bag in a flightcase. I think it's certainly under 50 pounds. For the small flights it actually had to sit in my lap. And 40+ pounds sitting on your lap for an hour in a plane gets weary too. Kind of cuts off circulation.
    .
    Oh, and leaving for the trip at BWI, I had to plow it through 8" of snow in the long term parking lot at 4 am. Trust me.... dragging $7000 of delicate electronics through snow, jacked on caffeine and after sliding 60 miles down I-95 in a major ice storm on two hours sleep was stressful to say the least. And...really worrying about what security and customs was going to say all the way through this crazy journey on top of it. All was fine once we got there and, that's why I said I'd rather not go through that again but, I kinda have to. Out there on the beach, 12 watts made the difference!
    I am flying on American Airlines, and it looks like stuff that is 51-70 pounds has a $100 fee each way.

    Hmp.

  4. #84
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    I used to have a Canon SD550 camera or something with an underwater housing. I then upgraded to a newer Canon camera with a housing, and the old camera failed.

    So the question is given the size of the older housing, with a spinning mirror or two + attiny MCU doing pulse width tricks, could I pack a laser projector into the underwater housing from the old camera? The other possibility is two speakers but then I need an amplifier. This has to happen.

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    Quote Originally Posted by telmnstr View Post
    I am flying on American Airlines, and it looks like stuff that is 51-70 pounds has a $100 fee each way.

    Hmp.
    Bingo. We're Delta and it's the same deal. Exactly why the projector sat on my lap. In the flight case it was most assuredly over 50 pounds. Even a Pelican put it over if I recall.
    PM Sent...

  6. #86
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    Cool Lasers + seawater; what could go wrong?

    Mario ran into that weight limit when he attended the very first Caribb-LEM. He had his projector in his bag and it ended up being over 100 lbs! They would not let him check the bag - period. So he took some things out and got the bag weight down to like 96 pounds or something, but even so the over-weight bag fee was so high that it was actually cheaper for him to upgrade his ticket to FIRST CLASS (like a $250 upgrade) verses paying the overweight fee both ways... So that's what he did. Turns out that First Class doesn't charge for overweight bags!

    But yeah, you definitely want to watch your bag weight, and it's unlikely that a projector + flight case will ever be less than 50 lbs. Also note that once you go over 75 lbs the fees skyrocket! Conversely, there is no weight limit on a carry-on... You could literally have a 150 lb carry-on bag, and so long as you can lift it and it fits under the seat in front of you, you're golden!

    Regarding the underwater projector idea - we kicked this around last time too, but we never actually did anything. Maybe if we have a small enough projector we can drop it into a tall fish tank and then partially submerge the fish tank in the training pool in front of the resort? That would give you beams at ~ 1 ft deep, and if you aimed them down you could do an underwater beam show in the training pool... Would need to weigh down the tank so it didn't float too high, and you'll have to secure it so it didn't float away from the dock, but we could certainly make this happen.

    We would absolutely need a ground-fault adapter though. Don't want to electrocute anyone. (Seawater being conductive and all that!)

    Rich: Do you have an empty fish tank on the island? Or maybe some sheets of plexiglass and some aquarium adhesive that we could use to make something?

    Damn - we'd also need an underwater speaker for sound. Hmmm... Maybe we need to arrange a shipment of parts to the island in advance of our trip! Wonder how much that might cost... (Rich? Any ideas?)

    Adam

  7. #87
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post

    Damn - we'd also need an underwater speaker for sound. Hmmm... Maybe we need to arrange a shipment of parts to the island in advance of our trip! Wonder how much that might cost... (Rich? Any ideas?)

    Adam
    So I actually bought these transducer things to build a portable underwater sample player. They're way heavy though and take a good bit of power to drive them. It's been my goal to build a "box" that I can bring to the quarry that I go diving at sometimes. There is always a lot of people training there, and I always thought it would be funny to be able to play a sample of a cell phone ringing underwater. I wouldn't do the Jaws theme when students are around but it would be funny for non-students (It's a quarry, there is like a handfull of bass fish.) Whale sounds was another goal. They're meant to be used to turn any surface into a speaker. I hooked one up to a QSC amp ( I <3 QSC ) and the transducer is okay I suppose. It's not hi-fi. But it would work underwater, and could double as a 6 pound weight.

  8. #88
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    Let's just set up on the bar structure and fire down to the water. 6-12 watts would do nicely, during a night dive. I was too lazy last time it would've worked out. Something about a pub crawl..

  9. #89
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    Cause, you know, geek, and excited about the trip I was looking at google satellite images of the island. Then go to thinking about utilities on Utila. I did some research and the (unknown dated article) says at the time of the writing the Island used 1,500 gallons a day of Diesel fuel to generate the electricity for the island of Utila!

    Also, "In 2005 UPCO was bought out and the new owners have been struggling to keep the company going and on track. The original two .750 Megawatt generators purchased by UPCC have now all disintegrated. A 1.5 Megawatt and in February 1.25 Megawatt machines were brought in by Commercial Laize. "

    I imagine the salt water air does a number on them!

  10. #90
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    And on top of that the "diesel generators" on the island?? Actual locomotives.

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