[PSUBS-MAILIST] Flathead Lake trip

Sun Aug 11 22:41:10 EDT 2019

That is because I am still traveling the 2050 miles from Montana to Texas.  I am still about 600 miles from home but we are in Texas.  I will begin uploading pictures, video, cockpit voice recordings and boat dive data to David Colombo tomorrow late when I get back.

Last time I spoke David, he had over 1/3 of a terabyte off data and that was without most of the teams individual files.

It is going to take David and Alec some time to digest the files.

More latter but for me, this was my best set of dives to date for the R300.  Visibility was great and we made a lot of great dive sites in the lake.  

Thursday night at about 10-11 pm Gamma and the R300 each made our first night dives.  We descended together to 200 ft.  Tenders said that it looked like a UFO slowly descending into the black.  It was a hoot.

More later including a “das boat” video clip of my boat at Yellow Bay and one of my all time favorites, the “Great White” clip in which Alan Parks videoed the R300 as she passed 3-4’ directly below the keel of Jessie B and emerged out the starboard side.

From 1-5pm on Friday we had at least 300 visitors to the boathouse , mostly very excited kids.  Was a joy!

Great week, great support from FLBS and a great team.

More later

Best Cliff

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 11, 2019, at 9:03 PM, Brian Cox via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
> 
> Haven't seen any pics of Cliff's sub !  
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> 
> --- personal_submersibles at psubs.org wrote:
> 
> From: hank pronk via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
> To: Brian Cox via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Flathead Lake trip
> Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2019 03:11:47 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> Brian, 
> Yes it was a great trip.  It was well planned out and the FLBS facility was incredible, plus the the boats and crew were great!
> It turns out the sampler connector can be installed from two directions.  I had it installed in reverse and the relay that switches polarity burnt out from leaving it on too long by accident.  Luckily the connection was in backwards allowing me to reverse it by switching to the working side of the relay.  Otherwise I would have had to hard wire to the breaker to make it work, and we would have done that.  
> 
> I forgot we did have an incident, just prior to diving with a student an o-ring failed on my 80 cu ft HP tank.  Air suddenly burst from the yoke connection.  Dave jumped right on it and turned off the air valve.  We only lost 800 psi and were able to replace  the o-ring from Tim's spares and we could make the dive.
> Hank
> 
> On Saturday, August 10, 2019, 8:40:08 PM MDT, Brian Cox via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sound like it was and incredibly great trip !   Sorry I missed that one !   Why did you have to reverse the polarity on the relay?
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> 
> --- personal_submersibles at psubs.org wrote:
> 
> From: hank pronk via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
> To: Personal Submersibles General Discussion <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
> Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Flathead Lake trip
> Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2019 22:33:07 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> Hi All,
> Unlike Cliff and David, I had a short trip home from FLBS today, so I can make the first report on the trip.  All went smooth for Gamma except for a failed CO2 meter,   I was going to cancel one day of diving to drive home and get the spare, but David and I decided that it was safe to dive with just an O2 meter and the altimeter.  I have not practiced with that because I had a reliable CO2 meter for years.  Turns out it is very easy and reliable.  The altimeter correlated perfectly with the O2 meter - just allow for temp drops at the bottom.  David and I had an exceptional dive on a vertical wall about 225 feet deep-in fact the wall had an outcrop above the sub.  We managed to take many samples with the sampler for the science guys.  David and I had to rewire the polarity of the sampler while clinging to the side of the rock wall.  I parked by clinging to the rock wall with forward thrust to keep us in place at the proper depth for sampling while David located bits of sediment among the rocks.  At the same time we had to revers the wires on the relay in the electric panel.   It was a total gas!  We though we might have to drill and blast to get samples and had lots of fun joking in the sub about that.  This was my all time best dive in Gamma and Dave was a riot to have with me.  Dave , Tim and I are ready to compete in the sub launch and retevial  races -we are a well oiled machine, the three of us.  Warning to Cliff, we will be recruiting  Sean to team Canada in the future.  One of my female passenger stated that the sub ride was in the top ten best things she ever did.  Then 10 minutes into the dive she corrected that and said it was in the top five things she ever did.  Finally after cruising the bottom for a while she proclaimed it was the number 1 best thing she ever did.  That was the highlight of the trip for me.
> Hank
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