Oceanic VT Pro Owners - Thoughts??

[HammerNoMore]

Well, I finally got to attempt dive with my VT pro last week in PR. I had bought this a little while back and since weather mucked up my last dive trip, this was my first chance to try it out.

I had hooked it up to a tank in my house and set everything up the way I wanted it to and it seemed to be working fine.

When I got on the dive boat the first day, I activated it and double checked the settings. About 10 minutes later I looked down to discover that the nitrogen load graph was full and flashing and it would not go into planning mode. A quick check of the manual and it seems it was in permanant violation mode (kind of hard if it's never been wet).

Confused, I proceeded to yank the battery and try again. Every thing seemed ok, even when I got in the water and the computer was kind enough to tell me it was wet . Within the first 5 feet of the decent it started beeping, a quick look confirmed, back in permanant violation mode. I was wearing my old computer so I continued the dive as normal. The pressure seemed to work the entire time, but the numbes seemed to be less than my analog guage.

During the surface interval I tried again, yanking the battery and performing a reset. This time it seemed happy as I descended to about 60 feet, at which point I had a leak from the O-Ring on my HP hose (seemed to be my day for equipment failure). The leak was slow enough to allow for a safety stop, during which I noticed that the pressure gauge on the VT Pro was not able to keep up with the rapid loss of gas, the analog version was reading much lower than the computer. Anyway, when I last checked the VT Pro before surfacing it seemed fine, but as soon as I got on the boat I looked at it and it was back in permanant violation mode.

When I got back to the room I took the battery out for several hours to see if that would help. When I put it back it went back into permanant violation mode within a couple of minutes. This was on Sunday, so after my Monday morning dives (with my old computer) I called Oceanic's tech support and talked to Ron.

Ron was extremely helpfull and hooked me up with the PR rep to try to find a replacment on the island. There were none available near me (might have been in San Juan 2+ hours away, I never checked), so Ron was going to overnight one to my dive op to swap out. Unfortunatly, he didn't have any availble to ship until a couple of days later and by then it was too late. At any rate, I thought the customer service was top notch. I sent the unit back to Ron myself (have had a bit of a falling out with my over charging LDS so I'm not taking it back there). He's just going to send me a brand new one and wants to take mine apart to figure out what went wrong.

James

 

[chforte]

Just got back from T&C a few days ago. Was staying at Beaches Resort (the resort went to west caicos 1 day - suprise suprise). Took the advice from the board and did the 3 tank dive with Fifi on Thursday (talk about a class act). On the 2nd dive, close to the end, I checked my VT and it read about 1400psi. Checked maybe 2 minutes later (the beeping made me check) and it read 0psi :wacko: I knew I had plenty of air left. Did my saftey stop and got back on the boat. One of the crew checked the tank and I had over 1100 left in the tank. We switched it to a fresh tank and it (my VT Pro) still read 0psi. They gave me a gauge to use.

Everything else worked fine (I think) just the tank pressure reading was/is off. I will take it into my LDS this week and see what they can do (knowing my luck... it will work just fine)

anyone else run into this problem?

 

[PhilD]

I've only done 11 dives with my VT Pro and have had no real problems. I've lost the signal quite a few times, but it always comes back.

I had a Versa Pro previously, so was familiar with the display and operation, which was also one of the reasons I bought the VT. I've been happy with both, but there are a couple of issues that I don't like;

1/ It is real easy to set the ascent rate alarm off, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it records >60'/sec as my max ascent rate for the whole ascent, even if the overall ascent rate is less than 30'/sec. It says the max ascent rate is based on the max ascent rate for at least 4 seconds, but that does not seem to be the case. I can ascend real slow and set the alarm off by simply moving my arm up for a second or two and it still shows max ascent of >60'/sec.

This is also true for the PC software, as it records the max ascent rate for the sampling interval. I had the sampling interval to set to 15 seconds, and have since set to 2', which seems to work much better.

2/ The DTR displayed is based on whatever value gives the least DTR, No Deco, or ATR. More often than not, it switches to ATR, especially at depth. When it does this, there is no way of seeing the No Deco time, which I personally would also like to know.

The software, while relatively basic, gives you more info than you get from the computer display, such as psi at beginning of dive (ie: when you descend below 4') and at the end of the dive (when you ascend above 4'), your ascent rate, NDL, ATR, TLBG, O2BG, etc, for each sampling interval.

One thing to remember with the transmitter is to be real gentle turning on the tank, otherwise you can blow the transmitter. I always inflate my BC while opening the tank valve and open it real slow, otherwise the transmitter can get blown.

Overall I'm happy with it, especially it's ease of use and big display.