Torpedo Scooter Question

[ProfessorAronnax]

Awesome deal-and you'll notice when your exploring e.g. looking for sharks teeth, cruising a reef etc. anything over .5 mph is too fast. I usually end up pulsing the trigger(not Torpedo but whatever) even at the lowest speed when looking for stuff.

 

[krawdady]

Thanks for the advice on the search techniques.

So heres a crazy question though. Has anyone ever slung a scooter under your arm similar to what tech divers would do with extra tanks? It may be a silly question but since the battery time is only 55 minutes I mainly want it for the trips out and back and a little moving around. The Torpedo is shaped similar to a tank (or a torpedo hence the name). While diving Venice I am usually down at least 1 1/2 hours and with scooter that will probably increase so if I used it all the time I would run out of battery long before teh end of the dive. I was just wondering if there was a way to attach it somewhere. It may be that it's just too bulky but I figured I would see if anyone has ever tried it.

 

[Mattleycrue76]

Yes absolutely. Most of the technically oriented scooter have a D ring on the nose of the scooter for this very reason. I find that on many dives I use my scooter for less than half of the actual dive time. The rest of the time I use a doube ender to clip it off to my right chest D ring. The tow chord stays attached to the crotch D ring so going from clipped off to scootering takes about 10 seconds. This way the scooter sits in the water like a stage or deco bottle, except it's on the right. You hardly even feel that it's there.

From the pictures I see that you'd have to devise something for the torpedo as it doesn't have anywhere to attach a bolt snap or DE to the nose but I'm sure you can come up with something

 

[krawdady]

Thanks Mattleycrue. I almost didn't ask because I thought it was way to big and bulky to be practical. I should be able to devise something to attach to two points on the side bar. You have been very helpful with all of this. Thank you.

 

[divepig2]

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the customer service at Torpedo. I left a message with them and they called back in ten minutes! Alfred was very helpful, and I don't even own their product (yet). That alone would sway me in their direction. I don't now about the speed or performance but if you look at the "wacky races" tests, and compare the speed to cost ratio, they clearly win.
Good luck with your endeavor!
H

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Had mine in the water today! What a freakin blast! 51-60 degree water temps, 5 foot vis, 75 air temp, sunny. I was under for an hour and 20 minutes and on the scooter about 80% of the time. it never missed a beat. Great tool. I covered more of the lake in that time than I had in 25 dives. Max depth 65-70 feet. I surfaced briefly a couple times to check position due to the poor vis and was really surprised to see how far I was from point to point using the scooter and how fast. I was not the least bit tired and out of 2800 psi in my double 85's I used a little over 1400 psi. That's about 1000 less than I would have used to even attempt to cover the same distance swimming.

 

[krawdady]

Sounds like fun Jim. Was it tough to "swim it" when you weren't using it or did you attach it to yourself somehow? I'm a little concerned that the batteries on the one I bought haven't been stored properly so thay may not be at 100%. I did hang mine over the edge of the pool yesterday and fired it up. It seems to have plenty of power.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

It was not hard to swim around at all. It is only 1lb neg so it was not much different weight wise than a big hand held light. The length could be an issue in some places but it is balanced pretty good. I had no trouble just grabbing a handle and moving it around. I will though be rigging up a tow line and I'm going to set it up with a harness like my stage bottles to clip it off. I did not take the 40 with me but I could not see a problem with carrying it and slinging the scooter like two stages if I do it correctly. And for the time it would most likely be slung like that it would not be an issue. And I think if I set it up like a stage I could always clip off one end and let the back trail like an empty stage and it would be out of the way. Don;t know if that would be good for close to the bottom swimming but going up a line or well up from the reef it should be ok. The nice thing is I can experiment with it and not have to physically alter the scooter body itself. Just fasten some line onto the handles.

One other thing that I really liked and did not expect was how narrow a cone the thrust was. It does go straight back. I could feel it against my body but even skimming the bottom a foot or so above it did not mess up the vis behind me like I thought it might. There were only 3 other divers there and I did want to experiment with it and not screw up their dives so I took it out over some flats well away from the area they were in and just ran it. Except for a couple times when a rock loomed up and I had to do a quick upward and did direct some of the blast down it did not screw up the vis by stirring the silt up at all. Those trimes when I did it was quick and a nice cloud did form but again not any more than a diver using a flutter kick that close would do. In fact it was probably less since a diver would have been continuously kicking and messing it up. Overall first impressions is I like it and will be getting a lot of use out of it. Once it is all set up the way I want and I get to really use it more I may start writing a course to teach and get another one to use for students!

 

[krawdady]

Thanks Jim. I might be able to get out and play with mine next weekend. I would love to see an example of your harness once you get it rigged up. I suspect I will be wanting to do something similar with mine and would love some guidence. Thanks again for the review.

 

[Doc.Caliban]

Disregard, I missed the second page.