Blub.

[themagni]

Hi everyone.

A short bio: I'm a married Electrical Engineer with 2 kids, a van, and a mortgage.

I've got AOW and 40 dives. I just did two nice night dives this week. There's a great story about how I got my primary light should anyone care.

All my dives are local shore dives in BC; it was 30 degrees C outside for my last dive, and I wore a drysuit. I was able to lose 4 pounds of lead with my new gear, which was nice. (Down to 30 pounds now!) I haven't traveled anywhere to go diving.

I'm a on land (as I've been my whole life), and I suppose I'm a in the water. (Except for the "tropical diving" part, of course.)

 

[scubastaci]

welcome

 

[pasley]

Welcome,

Enjoy the diving and the life as you live it.

 

[water_monkey]

Welcome! If you have an interesting story, of course we want to hear it! Thats one of the great reasons to hang out on Scubaboard!

 

[Bob Vincent]

Hi TheMagni...

& Welcome to ...
:sblogo::colouredsmilies::colouredsmilies:

Tell your story ... we always like to hear a good are funny story!

Do you think there are really dorks in the water? In 30 plus years of being a diver I've actually never met a DORK in the water diving. We might joke around and say the DORK word. But divers are a pretty unique group. Friendly, helpful, caring, just nice people!

Others may call us "dorks" but down deep we know better, right! So have a dorky day! I only pulled your leg alittle!

Again welcome to the Board.

 

[ScubaSam]

An extra warm welcome to Scuba Board, themagni, especially if you have yellow snorkel and yellow fins... YOU DO...ya see you'll fit right in.

A great story to share...well come on, give!

 

[themagni]

All right. Here's how I got my Princeton Tec Shockwave LED:

I was at a garage sale and I got an old PT handheld light for nothing. I figured that I could get a few parts together and make myself a nice dive light in the housing.

Eventually, I got around to buying a few parts from Digikey (online electronics supplier) and my local electronics store and put together a pulse-driven LED dive light. It ran off a 9V battery and gave a fair bit of light. The 3W LEDs are quite expensive; to buy in lots of 1, they run about $50*, and so I used a $5 high-intensity LED and a pulse driver to "cheat" more light out of it. Don't try that at home. (I'd like to say, "I'm a professional", but they're still doing the paperwork on that.)

I took it on a dive, and it leaked. A very small amount, less than 1mL. "Oh well," I figured, "$20 down the drain. I've had worse."

I knew I had to get a better light, and bought a Torrent LED for my birthday from my FLDS. (Surprise! Oh, hey, I shouldn't have.) I dove with it once, then told my FLDS about how much nicer it was than the old light I built. Also, my home-built light leaked.

"Wait, it's in a PT housing? Those have a lifetime warranty. Bring it in."

I was blown away by how both parties responded: "Leaky light? Replacement coming right up, sir." I brought in the old light, and basically PT said, "Cute, but this is how you build a real LED SCUBA light. Any time, lifetime warranty, thank you for buying PT." I've still got all the parts I bought - nobody wanted them.

It's phenomenal, and now my backup light (the torrent) is brighter than a lot of primary lights. I was much brighter than both the folks I went out with on Tuesday. I saw a review saying, "it's like taking a small piece of the sun with you", and that's a reasonable assessment. The only problem it has is that if it's silty or murky then you light up a LOT of murk, just like high-beams in heavy fog.

_{*There are some $2100 LED modules. I'd love to try one of those out.}