Who said a Taxi driver knows the way?

Eric Keibler Mar 30, 2008

It all ended with a series of Ian, can you ask him to turn around? The dive shop and the hotel are in the other direction; we just passed them. And later, I don’t think he knows where the airport is… just keep going, I think I see the sign up ahead. Of course these two events were broken up by lunch and a lie by the pool all after getting off the boat and experiencing more of the Egyptian governmental efficiency – he wanted to know if I had any cigarettes, when I explained that I did not smoke he wanted to know if I had a lighter. Since I did not smoke, I had no lighter so everyone needs to bring all of their luggage in. This was followed by some more arguing between the officials and our driver, the luggage being x-rayed by an operator who was talking to another official and who did not even bother to look at the monitor, re-loading the van, more yelling and off for “the hotel.”

It was a full week. The routine was assembly and diving during the day, lectures at night, and a written test in my spare time. All-n-all it was an interesting week. The diving was less than spectacular, the scenery was a little bland (except for the Russians) but the company was fun and the Rebreather was interesting.

Kevin noted that while we had a number of issues with the units, at the end of the week all twenty of the units were still divable — albeit the units had a variety of failures from secondary handsets staying on or not working, temperature monitors (TPM) not functioning, and high pressure sensors either failing or giving erratic results. He had been on tests of other units where the failure rate was 50% to 100% before the week was out.

My own personal unit had a secondary handset failure, a non-functioning TPM and an oxygen sensor that went in and out and gave erratic reading when it was functioning. I am planning on visiting the factory and taking a technician course so I hope to learn more about these failures.

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