Cuda Fury vs. Genesis 1200

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? Yes, that scooter is on its way back to be upgraded to current production firmware, since the bug was just identified.


Jon

Really?! It took 2 years to find a bug and fix it on a scooter that gets more use than most? Gah! What's that say? Let me know when you're certain there are no bugs... I'm guessing in another few years, and I'll be ready for that innovation. Like I said in another thread, as soon as the Genesis are proven reliable, I'll sell my minnus and make the purchase. I believe your innovations are the scooter of the future, but I can drive to S. Florida to fix mine if it is ever broke. Being without one for a couple weeks while it's shipped to California just doesn't work for me. FYI, amigo also rents SS Scooters... I can't remember anyone ever telling me the SS scooters were down 2 times in 2 months and in for repair. And they get dove just as much as the genesis.

---------- Post added December 7th, 2013 at 07:47 AM ----------

...and already logged more dives in two years than your scooter will ever see?
Jon

I'm not sure I buy that. Perhaps for the average diver that might be true. This minnus happened to sit at CCDS for over a year being used by many many people every week before I bought it. And I use it pretty regularly. I'm not the typical 12 days of diving per year kind of guy.
 
The Fury is a LiIon battery (very expensive to begin with) The upgraded prop is a metal, fixed blade (not pitch adjustment). I prefer the pitch adjustment for fine tuning, but that's what I like. I have a Cuda 650, a great NiMH scooter, not too heavy (about 70 lbs), but not quite as manouverable as my Hollis H-160 was. It took me a full day, but I have the Cuda perfectly weighted & balanced & love it! It has great speed.... though I rarely go above speed 4 out of 8. The upper speeds are just too uncomfortable for me, pulling on a crotch strap. I put my Cuda through hell in the quarry & the caves & never had a bit of trouble. I have yet to run the battery down in a busy day of diving. The 650 & 450 Cudas can be outfitted with a shorter body for airline. I like the point of only 2 penetration points (prop shaft & the removable tail section to pull the battery out for charging. If the Genesis battery is LiIon, then I could understand why you would want it sealed, but if it is, then it would not be considered airline safe (my LiIon batteries for my canister lights are barely tolerable).

Thanks for the Cuda info. The Genesis 600 is LiIon, but because it's two separate 296Wh batteries it's airline friendly within the US at a minimum. You raise a good point about the can light, though...if I want to travel with the 600, I'll need to leave the can light battery installed and carry on both the 600 packs as "spares". 3 100-300Wh LiIon batteries are the current limit from what I've read.
 
Let me know when you're certain there are no bugs...

Yeah, that’s something I’d love to hear from a gear manufacturer…no, wait:

WARNING
This computer has bugs. Although we haven’t found them all yet, they are there.

As for the Genesis 600, I'm loving it. Took it on a hunt for a large plane wreck off the Mokes Saturday morning and drove it all over a ledge in the 150'-200' range, and aside from managing to get myself lost in one Hell of a hurry it did everything I asked it to without giving me any headaches. Ditto for some recreational wrecks and reefs on Sunday.

Cover huge expanses of bottom at near full throttle carrying doubles and multiple stages while looking for a big tail section? Did that. Dial it back to a crawl while checking out interesting bits of wreckage, black coral, and ulua caves? Did that too. Drive faster through a corridor then slow down to make a sharp left turn, power back up a bit to cross a hold, then drop back for a narrow hatch into the engine room? Yep, not a problem. I'm still not 100% sold on the infinitely variable speed control from an 'executing the plan' perspective, because it makes nailing a given power consumption setting harder, but there's no denying that it's extremely easy to drive an exact route with it. The short nose and Kort nozzle's narrow thrust column all probaby help with how easy it is to turn, too.

Despite the 91lb thrust TBM 2011 says it puts out, between the soft-start feature and offset battery mass/offset trim weights, at full throttle it feels less painful on the crotch than the Magnus and didn't require as much clockwise correction to compensate for the rotational torque. In terms of battery capacity vs. real world use, despite putting about about 50 minutes of heavy throttle use on it Saturday and an hour and a half or so of everything from crawling to full throttle on it Sunday, the charge cycle times indicate I wasn't burning more than 60% or so of total capacity. With some throttle discipline, I have no problem believing that the tiny little 600 can give me something close to the 5.6mi cruise range TBM claims it did in dry suit/single tank configuration.

Not much else to report: it's tiny (2 feet long, 34lbs), it's got nearly unmatched cruise range and peak thrust, I don't have to open it up to charge it (plug the charger into the nose wetconn, pull the locking strips so it's not a LiIon pipebomb should something go wrong, and off it goes), and maintenance is as easy as pulling the prop off and dropping the whole thing in some fresh water to soak. When I have $4k to blow I'll buy a set of 1500 batteries/nose for it and see about the 14mi cruise range...once I get a CCR to allow me to actually enjoy that kind of runtime. Though I'll have a grand time shipping it back to the mainland from HI.

Also, my whole scooter buying process was heavily assisted by the 2011 TBM report and I gave them a donation recently after thinking about how much help their work was to me. Anyone else who uses their data should think about doing the same. I'd love to see a 2014 TBM happen and let me know what's out there in terms of DPV options.
 

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