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Jay,
PSUBS
has an operations manual on our website, and more importantly a procedure for
maintaining it that makes the community part of the process.
Click
on "Research Links"
Click
on "Design & Fabrication"
Click
on "Standards & Guidelines"
Click
on "PSUBS Guidelines"
On the
left menu, click on "Operating Guidelines"
The
content is sparse, but is a starting point for self-regulation. Rather
than starting anew, I'd like to see the existing PSUBS online document expanded
by this convention. Almost all of the existing material came
from current US federal law and Coast Guard regulations applicable to
"recreational" submersibles, hence the sparseness of the document. As we
all know, when it comes to personal submersibles there are few regulations that
pertain to us (true in most countries, not just the US).
We have added two minor updates to the document via RFC's which were
announced via the mailing list and the web forum, and gave the opportunity for
the general psubbing community to comment. These are documented in the
"log" links in the left menu.
I
suggest we use the dive-ops session to discuss expansion of the current online
document, by looking at the user manuals and tourist sub guidelines you have
available and seeking adoption of pertinent parts that apply to personal
submersibles. The suggested enhancements and adoptions that
come from our discussions in Castine should be turned into RFC's that
we can announce to the rest of the community, and ultimately include in the
online document.
The
day is soon coming when having an operations guideline is going to become
important. Especially if we have any expectation of government (local,
state, or federal) to respond in the case of a disabled personal
submersible. Anytime we talk about "standards", what we really mean is
putting restrictions on how a pilot uses a sub, and/or, making it more
difficult to put the sub in water due to meeting requirements for
particular equipment and procedures. Considering that we have no way
of enforcing compliance, we need to be careful how we implement standards if we
have an expectation of them being accepted by a majority of psubbers.
The only real enforcement method we have is peer-pressure. By keeping the
entire community involved in the process, we stand a much better chance of
psubbers voluntarily complying with the standards.
I
think it's important to have a documented process for developing any standards,
so that they are respected both by psubbers and any regulatory authorities that
might criticize an arbitrary document. The current process provides a
method to create, modify, or delete standards, and community involvement in
that decision making. What we are missing is a "Standards &
Guidelines Committee" to vote up or down on particular standards that are
divisive and/or really will impact psubbers. It can't be an individual
(like me) making those decisions, it needs to be a committee of our peers
(preferably ones that own or pilot subs). So under your "What else do we
need to do" category, I suggest we look at forming such committee so we can
build a comprehensive "Standards & Guidelines" document that is applicable
to recreational subs and acceptable to a majority of the PSUBS
community.
Jon
I have volunteered to facilitate the new session on
developing a standardized PSUBS Ops Manual that could be easily adopted for
the particular needs of individual PSUBS. While conducting research so I
would be prepared for this session, looked around the web for someone else’s
Ops Manual to no avail. Could find Users Manuals for various research
subs but this was not what was needed. Emailed Vance and he pointed me
to further research sub manuals but again these were User Manuals. Then
I remember that I had a copy of Prizlaff’s international Safety Standard
Guidelines for the Operation of Tourist Submersibles on my
bookshelf. This has a 100+ pages of large-print, boilerplate operation
manual that is formatted for tourist subs which I can definitely copy for
handouts prior to the session so attendees can become familiar with the
material. Hopefully I can also OCR (convert it into text) so that we can
wordsmith it into a PSUBS Ops Manual. Jon & Ray could then take this
finished boilerplate and adopt it to the needs of managing subs in the water
at future conferences.
Questions:
1.
Are there any PSUBS members who are already familiar
with this text?
2.
Other than just attending the session, who might be
interested in editing a section of the Tourist Submersibles manual for
PSUBS ops? This could include those that will not be at the
Conference.
3.
Are there members that would be interested in the
final product?
4.
What else do we need to do?
R/Jay
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