Hi Ian,We have a lot less information on dive time, however I hope to change that by the end of the year with a side project I am working on. Yet another topic I planned for the business meeting some months ago. I am almost ready to announce availability of the first part of that project, probably in the next couple of weeks. If I am unable to finish it by July 14 I would still be happy to demo it for you in Florida.
I don't believe there is any desire to invite legislation by any of us that would further restrict our hobby. This topic has morphed to that, but perhaps that is a good thing since the original discussion of using ABS (or GL, Lloyds, Nippon, take your pick) as a guide probably does not appear so offensive now.
In regards to your first question of self-policing, I believe the concern is that someone with a poorly designed or fabricated vessel could someday kill themselves or someone else resulting in a well-intentioned politician taking action to protect the rest of us legislatively by requiring all subs be certified. There certainly is good argument as to whether that course would ever actually play out in the event of a private submariner death, and admittedly we cannot know for sure. If that time does arrive, then perception of this group will become important. Will we be seen as a disjointed group of individuals who ignore conventional wisdom, or will we be seen as a structured group who are concerned with safety and can demonstrate it?
Jon irox wrote:
Hi Jon, was doing a similar psubs count in my head the other day, I got up to over 30 of them, but realized probably a more pertinent question is how many active psubs are there. I.E. how many psubs dived in the last 12 months? I am guessing this number is much lower. I feel we should avoid inviting or preempting any additional legislation for private submarines. We are already subject to the same level of inspection and legislation as a home made boat, and if we so desire we can (at a cost) subject our own projects ABS (or some other authority's) legislation process. And of course, if a psub completely failed the ABS cert process, there is no legal implications preventing the owner from operating it. Two other questions that sprang to mind while reading this thread, "what are we scared of that requires policing" and "what benefits would we get from additional legislation". I can't help but notice that all the badly designed/built psubs don't make it passed a "dunk" type test - this is normally followed by the owner selling it and/or taking up a different hobby. The only real time I see a need for self policing is in the case another list member brought up - somebody attempting to dive an unsafe psub at the convention. At this point we should alert the appropriate water body authority and wash our hands of the situation(...?). As for the benefits, I can't really find any benefits which I don't already have access to if I desire (for example, hiringan engineer or ABS surveyor to do inspections/calculations).That been said, I am quite pro-ABS standards, especially for submersibles, and I intend to follow them as closely as I can. Unfortunately ABS doesn't contain a section for certifying concrete pressure hulls. However many bodies have dealt with certifying concrete structures (bridges, tunnels, dams, skyscrapers, oilrigs, etc.), so I don't think it'll be too hard to draft up some procedures which are similar (in process and spirit) to something the ABS might write. I expect we will be discussing this topic in some depth at this years convention. :) Cheers! Ian.
************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ The personal submersibles mailing list complies with the US Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Your email address appears in our database because either you, or someone you know, requested you receive messages from our organization. If you want to be removed from this mailing list simply click on the link below or send a blank email message to: removeme-personal_submersibles@psubs.org Removal of your email address from this mailing list occurs by an automated process and should be complete within five minutes of our server receiving your request. PSUBS.ORG PO Box 53 Weare, NH 03281 603-529-1100 ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************