My Diving Interests

(Above Left) Gravestone on the Tayleur (Lambay island, Dublin)             

(Above Right) Two Anemones (Coral Beach,   Connemara)

Photos Copyright Brian Stone 2004

I am founder of the DCU Sub Aqua Club, established in 2001. The Club is a CFT club, part of the CMAS European federation.

 

I moderate the North Dublin Snorkel email list, which you can join. Members of the list can send and receive all emails posted. Mostly we go out on Wednesday evenings to Skerries or Loughshinny, and on Sundays we go to Balscadden near Howth. Lots of other places on South side like Seapoint, Sandycove, 40 foot, Bulloch harbour etc. All levels of ability catered for. If you want to just get your CFT start of season snorkels done, or if you want to keep fit over the winter, or just drop by for a swim, join us. We are composed of CFT divers from Aer Lingus SAC, DCU SAC, Neptune SAC, Portmarnock SAC and lots of others, You will not receive any spam here, it is a closed moderated list.

 

DCU SAC periodically runs a course on “Digital Underwater Photography – The Technology Perspective”. It costs €150 for the day. Visit the link for DCU-SAC for the course details.

We transfer in divers of various levels from PADI,  BSAC and other federations to CFT  Club Diver* and Club Diver** grades. For DCU people only, you can subscribe to the DCU-SAC mailing list. We meet on Tuesday evenings for training, lectures and pool sessions and Thursdays for fitness and fun, join the list for info.  Our web site is a pretty good source of information on the club, for members and general public.

If you want to apply for membership to the club and are not a student in DCU, you can fill in a Non Student applicatiion form and send it in to the Diving Officer. Such applications must be sponsored by an existing member, no exceptions.

I am also a  PADI diver, qualification... Open Water Diver. That’s how I started into diving.
I am currently a CMAS and CFT *** , Leading Diver with Diver Medic, Rescue Diver, Diver Cox’n,  Nitrox Diver and Extended Range Diver (Decompression) certs.

I have some logs from my Suunto Cobra computer and encourage students with an interest in diving to get involved in sub-aqua computing, yes really!

I have a few tips on buying equipment. I use a Scubapro Glide 1000 BCD and a Custom Divers wing BCD for deep stuff. I use  Scubapro Mk20,1st stage regs. and R380, 2nd stages and Octopus as well as a Mk25 1st stages and R390 second stages for use on manifolded twinsets. I also have a Suunto Cobra computer with a compass module attached and a VR3 for deco diving. Lots of other bits'n bobs, just cannot resist gadgets in dive shops.

The PC interface for the Suunto is expensive (IR£100 here) but there are hacks available to build your own. Costs about £7 to do so, a big saving. It is a real shame that Suunto do not publish the interface protocol or the file formats for the PC logs, I believe that this would create an even greater interest the Suunto computers with developers publishing free software over the web. Remember the IBM PC and the reason that it took off, yes free software. Same thing with Palm top computers, free software again. We live in hope. In any case hacks are available all over the web. Let me know of any more useful ones that you find and i will include them.

I am into underwater photography and use a Canon S45 camera with a WP-DC300 housing with an Epoque ES-150DS strobe. I use Sea & Sea wide angle and macro lens attachments.

I also want to interface my Handspring Visor or Palm Pilot with my Cobra and develop a dive log for it. I am recruiting DCU final year computer students to work with me on this one. I want an open source project here. There are various dive logs available on the Web, including the really nice Ruiz Scuba Dive Log. In fact SUN Microsystems are developing a Java tutorial based on a dive log, so are all divers geeks, or all geeks divers? (thanks Glenn for the link!).

I will add more information as it becomes available on our DCU Sub Aqua Club site.