Podcast Episode Transcripts

#221 Narked At 90 Brent Hudson & John Routley - February 16, 2026 Speaker 1 Hello, everybody. Um, Ian and I are at the headquarters of Narked at ninety today to record some, um, footage and some stories. And we are here with Brent and John. So if you'd like to introduce yourselves briefly and, uh, just give us a bit about each of yourselves. Speaker 2 Hi, I'm John Rowley, uh, founder of ninety and General Dogsbody. I suppose that would lead me to me then, isn't it? Yeah. And you also, you know a little bit about your history. Just when did you first when did you first dive? Um, I think I was fourteen, in a gravel pit in Frankston. Um, luckily enough, I've dived all over the world and all around the UK. Um, yeah, sort of been there and done it really with diving now. Yeah, very lucky to have done what I've done. The other founder of ninety. Um. Technical trimix, rebreather diver. Um, I stopped logging dives after my one thousandth closed circuit mixed gas rebreather dive. So quite a lot. Yeah. Um, just strap the rebreather on. What? Late nineties? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. That's how you two got talking. Well, I had a full version of SolidWorks. CAD, and John had a, um, a lathe in his back garden, so we were destined to be very good friends, to be honest with you. And we made diving equipment for ourselves. That was it. Just one for me, one for John, you know. And we built it together. We designed it together. We made it. And then people would see us on a dive boat or in an inland cave or something, and they would look at our dive kit, point at us and go, that's brilliant. Where'd you get that from? I want one. So instead of making two, we made ten. You know, sold eight or gave eight away to, you know, other people just, you know, and that covered our two kind of thing, you know, and that was really how it started. It's like, well, where do you get that from? And of course we we're on dive forums and newsgroups and Yahoo groups. Yeah, that's before the Facebook and Instagram and everything you got nowadays. You know it's okay. We're old. You know we have that generation. I'll admit to it, you know. But, um, John's username on the forum was narked at ninety for narcosis. You know, he's just knocked. So where do you get that? From? That bloke Narked at ninety. And that's how her name came. You know, for one, you know, for better or worse, that's how it came about. Yeah. And that's how everybody know you. Yeah. So they say. Speaker 1 So when did Brent and John dive together for the first time? Speaker 2 Yeah, that was about Capernwray, wasn't it? Yeah. We decided. We decided this is our first meeting. Let's go for a drive in the car park. So we met in the in the car park at Capernwray inland. So it's a great place, to be honest with you. It's a great guidance. And I think they've got an even better and better. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've been there, but, you know. Yeah, we had a good time. I stopped, I stopped diving anything shallower than fifty meters because what's the point, you know. So it's been a long time since I'm there, but I've heard some great things about it. Anyway, John and I met there and I had a Drager Dolphin semi-closed rebreather which had modified modified into a closed circuit. And that's kind of how it was because John's was the same. Yeah. And it had a valve on. And then I took that off and I put on a micrometric metering valve. And basically your metabolic rate of how much oxygen you consume, it's the molecules of oxygen you consume. It's not volume. So having this metering valve like a needle valve that could only flow a small amount of oxygen. So you would turn this metering valve to match your metabolic rate. So you didn't have to keep on topping up your oxygen. Like your solenoid does. Speaker 1 Manually in control. Speaker 2 Exactly. So you do have a manual button, you know, to top it up should you work hard. But otherwise I was matching metabolic rate by a needle valve. And that was how it worked. I thought it was the best engineering. I'm an engineer by trade. So, you know, gas flow and gas systems. Something I knew quite a lot about and that's how I made it. And while I was in the water with John, it failed because it was home built and it was crap. And it just started flowing oxygen through the valve. Couldn't stop it. So I had to shut down the rebreather off the tank valve. So shut down the O2 right hand knob. Off it went. Of course, I'm with John, and he's. He's my friend and met him for the first time. And the last thing I actually wanted was John to think what a fuck up you are. I didn't want him to know. So I did that entire dive, flying the entire rebreather off the main tank valve, turn it on and off. On and off from the tank valve. Speaker 1 Oxygen on and off. Speaker 2 From the tank valve. So I maintained the PO2 entirely throughout the entire dive. Off the tank. Off the tank. Speaker 1 How long was the dive then? Speaker 2 Three quarters of an hour to an hour. I do remember that just because I didn't want to embarrass myself. And obviously. Did you tell him afterwards he figured it out? He was like, what are you doing? So in the end, I fessed up and ever since then he's like, actually, you're not as much of a fuck up as I thought. No, we've been solid friends ever since. Speaker 1 So did you dive buddy up together for a lot of your diving career? Speaker 2 Very little, to be honest with you. Um, the diving groups that I hung around with and John's friends were mainly cavers. Um, you know, so that's how John became close friends with people like John Volanthen. Yeah. You know, the likes. And fixing his kid up for him and stuff. And mine were wreck divers and divers. So, you know, we'd go out to places off the northeast coast of England, you know. So we dive off Sunderland, Newcastle Way and off the North Atlantic, Malin Head. Yeah. So my, my dives were mainly deep wreck and John's were mainly overhead environment. Now we did do a lot of diving together in places like Dorothea You know, it's probably one of my favorite inland lakes. Actually, the ABH shelf there is quite serene. That's the real dark one, isn't it? Yeah. We come out, um, from where you dropped down the slope. So we drop in the water. If you go straight across, there's a tunnel of about twenty metres. You go through there, you can drop down, there's another tunnel about fifty seven metres. You come back and there's a slope that goes down, levels off. At about eighty eight, you can go further out and hit the sump. I think it was one hundred and four metres at the time. If you go down there, you should find actually a little sign written on it. Really? Yeah, I did that. So everyone should. There's gnomes and stuff, but everyone should make them up. I don't think people would die from that anymore. Are they? No. You can't get in there. Yeah. I mean, it was it was the place where you went to technical dive and train, you know, it was. It's a deep water quarry, but the aid shelf there is quite serene place to just sit there, kneel down and just turn all your lights off. It's like a sensory deprivation tank. You just sit there at eighty eight metres. No light, no nothing. Speaker 1 Like you're in space. I should think it's just. Speaker 2 Like the only thing you can hear is your own blood flowing through your veins. Yeah, the air moving through the pipes of the rebreather. And occasionally there's the solenoid opens. That's it. Apart from that, there's nothing. And your heart beating. The thing is, I mean, the job I had at the time, it was quite stressful job for the company I worked for. So when you're there, you've got no other space in your life. You've got no room in your life for thinking about anything else apart from that dive. Mhm. Any worries? None of your stresses from work or anything else. It's just you and the rebreather and where you're at. And that can be an incredibly peaceful place to be mentally. Yeah. It separates you and just gives you that moment of calm you need. Speaker 1 So many people say that don't they? When you say what does being underwater mean. And it is just turning off. Speaker 2 And you have no room in your brain to think about anything else but what's in front of you. Speaker 1 No, no complacent thoughts. Speaker 2 The equipment is functioning. Your PO2, your depth, your decompression, your equipment, the record, the you know, the reef that you're on. You've got no room in your life except for what you're doing at that moment. And that can be somewhat refreshing. It can change your perception. It can be that relief that you needed these things. Phones, they steal it, don't they? They steal that sort of time away from you. Speaker 1 Just have downtime. Speaker 2 That's why it's good having. Yeah. It is. Time away from your phones and things like that. Hence why we all like diving. I'm afraid that I'm prejudiced because, you know, I'm in my fifties now, and I find myself worried that I'm prejudiced against this phones and the social media. Because you do disconnect from life. Yeah, yeah. But is it when you think about it? Or is it just that it's a new world and we should embrace it? Speaker 1 So it is a new world. But Narked at ninety did start with forums and comments from people and that communication. Um, so tell us more about that. Speaker 2 So in the early days we're active on the forums, but in the twilight years of the forums, there were a lot of people who were evangelical about their arguments over the safety of equipment. And instead of contributing proactively and being a positive influence on safety by arguing or condoning practices which would help. They focused on the negative and they attacked manufacturers, and they made it difficult for anybody to to really innovate without the worry of that negative publicity and the arguments and bonfires on the internet from keyboard warriors. And John, I decided we'd had enough. So we decided to withdraw from the forums in that way, because that's not what we were about. We weren't there to. To wave a flag or to argue or to, you know, to debate that if a rebreather was not as safe as others. So what? Let's make something that makes it safer and move on, you know, to get involved in those. Politics. More and more people using the forums as commercial hammer. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 You know, there's some bad actors out there, but there's also quite a good thing as well because I think with with that, the positive part of it is, is it debate. Um, help encourages ideas doesn't it? It did. It did at first. Yeah. I think the forums tend to they go through a, a life progression where they're quite niche. Everybody likes to be there, feel part of that little niche family and it grows bigger. It gets bigger and bigger. You have a few bad apples that are there who are just trolling the seven Ages of Man. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 And they're beating their chests. Speaker 2 Yeah. And it gets so big that the corporate sees it as a money scheme. So they, they get sold to a corporate entity, a media group. Then people find that out and find that they're not part of the family anymore. And then the readership dies off. Yeah. And they all seem to go through that sort of this bell curve of and it drops off. And when we got out of the forums, and it is a shame because more and more manufacturers would engage, but because you put your head above the parapet and there's people out there that have got nothing better to do than have a few beers and go and troll you on the internet. But manufacturers don't bother because it's just not worth the stress that comes with it. And it's a shame because it's such a good resource for people, but it only takes a few to ruin it for manufacturers has found An impasse, that it was mutually exclusive, to be professional and to be engaging with people when you had so many trolls. So it just didn't happen. So people just walked away from that. I suppose it's the same today with other organizations and social media, but in those early days we were accessible, so we had a lot of people came to us and said, oh, you did this, can you do this for me? And they knew who you were because of that. Mhm. And of course, you don't get that now. So a lot of people don't even know who we are, what we did or why we're relevant. Or maybe actually we're too old to be relevant I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. No, I think you are. And the you know, we're all diving. And as I said before, we all die and we could slap on a dive computer and go for a dive, and that'll bring us back because of you guys doing all the early work and putting the footprints down for us people to come afterwards. Yeah. Kind of. I mean, it has been an ethos you sort of forget. I mean, how how big a footprint we do have. Um, I found some old folders here in a box the other day, and I was going through. And it's in the early days before we had CAD. I draw everything by hand. Yeah, in the good old days of pad and pencil. And I've got every drawing that's ever been. Even when Brent's carried something. It's generally started with me sketching something first. And I've gone back through all these drawings from, for the last twenty five, thirty years of what I've done. I think it's something that I don't even remember doing that, but it's definitely my drawing and the amount of stuff that we've actually done and forgotten about. I mean, there's crates in the back of the factory here with all the old prototypes of things that we've made and which you really stop you you collect everything. He's a hoarder. Yeah, I'm a hoarder. With boxes with labels on. Yeah, he's labeled everything. You know, it's it's he's saying, um, you know, about what we've done in the past. Um, in the early days, we had such a strong ethos because we did not like people who copied. And it was actually it was something that was always been a mainstay. And we put it there, that copying skips understanding. If all you do is copy something, you just repurpose the layer from underneath, but you never understand how you got there. So the moment a product was copied, we just stopped doing it. And there's a lot of products that could have been invested in that we could have taken to the next level and created something amazing, but we brought a product out. People saw that as being superb. Then they copied it, did it cheaper and took away any incentive to put R&D money into the next level and we'll walk away. The Self-checker was a big one. We won all the awards for this test machine, and then a couple of copycats came out. Um, not particularly cheaper, but for you already in a very niche part of the market. And now if you're sharing that really niche market with three other companies now there's no development to what it actually did was stop the development for everybody. And now those companies have failed and haven't got that product anymore. But what they actually did do was killed. The market and the development that we were putting in, we still make it. We'll still we'll always make it because it's a really good safety piece of equipment, but there's no money for taking it to another level because. Speaker 1 It's doing a good job now. Speaker 2 It's doing a good job. But yeah, it's when when people they feel there's a big market out there, when actually they don't realize how niche and how specialist, how small a market it really is. It is niche, isn't it? And that's the one thing we've found. And when you look at the amount of people that go play football, watch football, uh, support football on a Saturday compared to the UK diving of people who go diving on a Saturday, you know, it's tiny in comparison. But when you look at innovation, diving has more innovation. Over the last twenty years than football. Oh yeah. By a long shot. Yeah. When you look at it, you've got to ask yourself where does that innovation come from? Now, as a commercial entity, if you were to look at the diving equipment sphere of influence, if you will, and you say, okay, so you want to develop a new product, bring it to market, make a profit margin out of that. And you look at the return of investment in that. You look at the return of investment. It doesn't work. If you look at all of the major developments that have been new, when you talk about diving equipment and what you actually find is that it didn't come from that kind of way of working. Now I'm going to talk about, for example, shearwater is a very good example. Now there are some amazing dive computers on the market the Halcyon dive computer, the ratio dive computer. They are phenomenal. Piece of kit. I just want to talk about history of this one because we were there at the very beginning. Bruce Partridge, who was the founder and the inventor of that particular product. He was a diver and he made one for himself. He wrote the code for himself, and it was a box about the size of a house brick that was strapped to his chest in a stainless steel box about the size of the box you got on the table here. You already about that size. And he made it because he had a passion for it. Speaker 1 And he had a need for it as well. Exactly. Speaker 2 So that development came with his own personal expense and his own personal time. But this is the very same reason that a lot of these things happen. If you look at it from a commercial point of view and you say, I've got an idea, we're going to develop a product and here's what we're going to do. We're going to get some of the most foremost experts in software development and hardware development throughout the world. And what we're going to do is we're going to get those people to give their time up for free to help us develop this from all over the world. I mean, we're talking about foremost experts from people like Google and Microsoft. The people who write the code for these companies invent it. We're going to get them to help out for free, and we're going to develop the product. Then what we're going to do is we're going to create this product, which is almost unhackable. We're going to create an operating system, and then we're going to give it away for free. You would think I was mental, wouldn't you? Okay. That's Linux. You look at things like Wikipedia. Why do people contribute to Wikipedia and to these kind of platforms for free? Yeah, because it's about mastery. We have a need to be good. Why do you play an instrument? Why do you even go scuba diving? Unless it's for a career? Unless you're a commercial diver, in which case you're nuts or a diver, in which case you're all nuts. Well, yeah. And the people we've met. That's true. You do it because you want to be better. It's like playing instruments. Like playing football. It's a mastery. The other thing we crave is self-direction. To be able to decide on this route that we want to take in order to get to where we want to be. And the last thing we need is a purpose. And that's what it was for us. Yeah. So we created products because of mastery. We wanted to be good. Now, the kind of diving that John and I did isn't the kind of diving that the majority of people in the world see. So those people who aren't scuba divers or aren't part of your audience, who sit there at home and watching television and they watch Gogglebox and they have a Discovery Channel come on, they see diving on telly and they see pretty fishes or wrecks or stuff like that, and they go on holiday and they see the people in the pool doing their first experience with the tank on the back thing aren't that amazing. That isn't that kind of thing. I'm talking about the kind of diving where my kit weighed over one hundred kilos. I weighed it what I was wearing on my back, physically carrying as I walked to the back of the boat or went into that cave, was one hundred kilos of equipment. When I got out of the water, I didn't want to do that on the back of the boat, on the lift. And as you broke the water, my legs buckled with the weight. That dry suit can be quite heavy when it's wet. So you're talking about a rebreather, and obviously you do have a certain amount of lead because you know, I'm not fit and not healthy, and I'm not as lean as some people who can get away with it. You know, I've got rebreather. It's got dead space and air spaces in it. You've got your wing, you've got your stems back, you've got some lead, you've got a dry suit, you've got two stages. And I used to run aluminium twelve litre stages. They were rare. I mean I'm talking hen's teeth kind of rare, two hundred and thirty bar twelve litre rallies. Perfect buoyancy you know. Plus of course the the rebreather had its oxygen diluent on there. Plus you'd have some gas and torches, torch batteries. And then of course, there's the, um, necessary lift gas for my bike's. Lift gas. A dedicated tank for your hammer and chisel and crowbar. Yeah. Okay, let's move on from that. I'm going to get the brass one. Takes a bit of polishing. Uh, I was rescuing it from the deep. Of course, you know, bringing it up for for other people to admire and to know that. But I'll get into stuff about the Rex and the brass and the social history stuff in a minute. But of course, you look at that kind of kit, and it's not the kind of kit that you just buy from your local scuba dive shop. Speaker 1 No. Speaker 2 And of course, it wasn't commercially available in the, you know, in the early days. In the early days. How old were you when you first dive, John? I started diving when I was fourteen with Bsac. So early eighties. You old bastard. Yeah. Young kid. Little bastard. Yeah. Actually, John is six months younger than me, so he's just a youngster. He is? Yes. I'm actually old. Much to my amazement, he taught me a lot of years of dying. And, you know, when rebreathers first became commercially viable. Viable when they became mainstream for those technical outreach divers. He talked about the late nineties. Really? Yeah. You know, and how we just found an old nine ninety magazine in my dry suit bag this morning. Yeah, well, we've been flicking through a really old magazine in his old dry suit. Yeah. Nine ninety. Brilliant magazine. It was, um. It was episode two. Yeah. I'm sure. It's the kind of thing that'll take you back. But you didn't buy that kind of dive equipment in the shop. Mhm. So what did you do. Well you had to make it or modify it. And just like people are into classic cars and classic motorcycles and stuff and you fettle you know you've got a you got a tinker, you do your tinker, you got a vice and and tools and stuff. Well, we were the same. So we'd make our own diamond equipment. Speaker 1 And at this point in time, knocked at ninety. Hadn't kind of evolved. It was just you guys tinkering with your. Speaker 2 We started going onto the forums and you had to give yourself a forum name. Mhm. Um, so I just I just knocked at ninety. It was just my forum name, I was called by the world and bit by bit we're making bits of kit and people are saying, oh where do I get that bit from. Where, where can I get that. And it's oh that ninety chap. So it start becoming a well-known name without it being a business. You ever get confused as naked at night? Yeah, all the time. Yeah. Speaker 1 Okay. Speaker 2 And choosing my naked man with his arms out. It never even occurred to me that if you misspelt it. And I'll put it at night. We've had several, um, shipments come in over the years. And the postman's laughing. He said, I've got a brown parcel for naked at ninety. I said, it's not ninety. He says, no, no, I know what it says. I said, no, it's more about what your psyche is than it is about. Speaker 1 What's in the parcel. Yeah. Speaker 2 I've had to go to a courier with a little card and hand it over, and then I can hear a load of sniggering. This is going to go down the dark path, especially if we end up in the halcyon GPS device. But anyway, moving on. So John and I were friends who met on the internet and discussed things because we were like minded on an old Yahoo newsgroup. Field. Dolphin. Dolphin. It was the unofficial dragon list. So we're chatting everything. And of course, John had a lathe in his back garden and I had a full version of SolidWorks CAD. So we were destined to be very good friends. So we'd make this stuff for each other, you know, we'd collaborate, we'd make two, and you get on a boat, or you go on a dive and somebody would be looking at you thinking, oh, that's brilliant. Where do you get that from? Can I have one? So instead of making two, we'd make ten and we'd sell eight it to pay for our tour as a hobby. Right. I mean, you didn't want to do anything but maybe pay for a drummer. You didn't do anything out of it. But you've got the joy and the emotional payoff from other people getting hold of that stuff and thinking that was brilliant. The mastery thing. Right? Just like Wikipedia, it's like Linux, you know, you're not doing it for a commercial enterprise. And it kind of grew and. And in two thousand and seven, still in two thousand and seven, um, we got the global award for innovation for one of those products. In twenty thirteen, still a sole sole trader at that point. So we actually incorporate the business. Speaker 1 And that was three people recommending you around the diving community forums. This is amazing. Speaker 2 And yeah, up to that point, it was basically me working in a shed making stuff, um, and answering phone calls. And basically it was all me. Brent was carrying stuff, but he was working for another company. I was technical director of a multinational company with seventeen thousand employees. I was responsible for the entire UK division of my specific subjects. I wasn't going to leave that, you know. But John took the courageous step of deciding to do this as a commercial venture, and he took a step. Now, obviously, I'm still with John, but I'm wearing two hats, and John put all of his time and effort into it. And that was, you know, in two thousand and seven, we got the Globe Award. In twenty ten, we got the European award. And somewhere in between, we got a letter from the NATO research dive teams saying, can we have one of these widgets that you make? That was really funny because. So they placed an order with us, but we were a small company. You got to pay for something for me to be able to give it to you. And so we've had this letter from okay, here's, here's an invoice and didn't get paid. So we waited and waited and waited. About six months later they said, Where's the product? I said you haven't paid for it. Where's the money? I said, well, we're in the military and you know, you pay, you pay your money, you can have the goods. So they finally paid and we sent one of our test machines out to out to NATO. But yeah, they said, no, no, we don't pay. You just give us. No, no, not going to work like that. Yeah. So I've still got their letter framed them. Oh, we I mean, we've got, um, purchased purchases from. You know, that was strange at that time. And when we got the NATO order, that was I was still running the business from my garage at the time. And I thought, as NATO actually googled my address to see I'm in the cul de sac, my dad in the town to see that, you know, um, people from the small beginnings were making such an impact. Speaker 1 Yeah. And from that initial NATO order, you obviously went into more military. Speaker 2 Well, the more military stuff came later. And I explained how that happened. I mean, we all saw John just rang me up one day, said, we've just had an order from Buckingham Palace. Yeah, I shipped equipment to the palace. Uh, I just I'm thinking maybe it's one of the one of the princes, you know? I have no idea who it was. I would never know. To the to the palace. Yeah, we'll never know. Wow. But anyway. So, um, it just kind of grew that way. Um, in October twenty eleven, I decided to leave my, um, employee, and just my whole plan was to join John, and we just do it forever and make our hobby, then our career. And that's kind of how it developed. And now, as far as the defense applications, we've we've made a lot of diving equipment in the background people don't know about. Yeah. People don't always see. They see a bit of a dive shop is what they a lot of people will understand, but they don't realize the amount of technology that we're doing for other people in the background that never gets seen in civilian circles. Yeah. so we do. I mean, we can't mention names because of contracts and things like that, but not disclosure agreements. I mean, there's numerous rebreathers that we've designed and built for military applications, um, where they'll come in with a brief to us. We'll do the design and manufacture and send it off to them for their approvals. And they do whatever they do behind closed doors with, with all that stuff. Speaker 1 But knowing that that then puts this kind of official stamp on you, that you are the experts to. Speaker 2 You know, but it's also for us, it's an incredible, incredible achievement. When you sat in a room with some gentlemen from pool and they're telling you what they need and you supply it to them. Mhm. That is such an accolade personally for me, you know, that I can think, am I really the guy that you're coming to for help. Yeah. But that's what you're saying. So before we had that big meeting with the military, um, when Covid hit and we end up being on the first phone call list for the government. And yeah, that is something to tell. Super stressful part of our lives. But you know, the whole world's falling apart with Covid and we've got Oxford University and and the government asking if we can help with the ventilators and not just a little bit of help, but we made twenty seven thousand three hundred and thirty odd oxygen control systems. Control systems? Yeah. Sensor systems and cable harnesses. Breathing tubes. We couldn't believe what happened there. And we're all at home. Covid hit. We were all furloughed. We didn't know what was going to happen. The future was so uncertain for everybody. But you know what? If you can see the next step in front of you, then take that. That's all way way. You might not be able to see the end of the forest, but can you see your next step? And that's where we were really all hoping for the best. And the phone call came through, and I can't remember exactly what time I was in the backyard. And it was one of my friends is a as a scuba diver, they said. And they've told me that I ought to give you a call. Brent, what do you know about oxygen control systems? Well, we make them for Devgru. That's good enough. Yeah. He said okay. My name is Professor Andrew Farmer. I'm dean of Oxford University. I'm heading up the the Covid response for the Cabinet Office and the Medical Health and Regulatory Authority. I have been told to give you a call. Can you help? And we did. And the whole thing was done at zero net profit. And Smith and Nephew actually funded the role. I think they phoned us after they got off the phone. Um, next time I spoke to him, this guy at the government, he said that's the most productive phone call I've ever made in my career, talking to you guys. And yeah, I mean, it felt amazing that we're getting to do the right thing and for the right reasons. Mhm. Um, it's very hard actually, that um, there's a lot of roadblocks. Well there's a bit, you know, recent news weren't there about uh somebody who had supplied shoddy PPE. Right there, you know, the government paid all this money, twenty million out on it. And yeah, we better not mention their names, but it's, uh, you know, you understand that that there was so much stuff going on, um, that it it's shocking to see all the hard work and effort that we was putting in to do the right thing and, and get nothing from it. And then government bodies are throwing millions and millions and millions. Yeah. At their friends, you know, all the stress and hard work that we went through. I mean, the first delivery of equipment, um, we sent to Hull. Hull. Yeah. Nephew. Nephew and Brent's wife went there because we were all too busy making and doing things. So we filled the car full of goods and send it up there, and it was like full hazmat suits. The press was there, but There. Everybody's in hazmat. I have no idea. No, they haven't told us what to expect, you know? Um, you're there with your little paper mask on. Um, and they're in full hazmat suits and TV cameras. Oh, yeah. Give us some warning. You know, we turn up and it's this massive thing going on. Um, yeah, I got in real trouble for that. She said at least you could have told me. I could have done my hair. But anyway. But so. So, you know, the diving side of this has grown because of necessity. Yeah. And because it's your passion, but not because of any grand plan. Really. I've got to be honest. It's sort of growing organically, and we're doing things that we enjoy rather than, here's our great master plan, and this is what we've focused on, and we're going to go that direction. We sort of weave this way and that way and do do things that we enjoy. Yeah, some things end up really good and others don't. I mean, yeah, I mean, I remember wreck diving off the northeast coast and we've discovered so many wrecks. I mean, we ended up on ITN news once because You know. And on these wrecks, you have to find your way back to the shoreline. Yeah, it's an absolute necessity. Now, I know we all should line off. And obviously, especially if you're doing wreck penetration, that's an absolute necessity. And there's plenty of stories that have come out recently where you hear from other people's mistakes and you should learn from them. So I've got to give kudos to those people who have told their story, despite the fact that they know they've made mistakes, you know? But we should do that. But we always, not always do that, especially when it's a really nice dive. But getting back to that, what's important? So in the early days we used to use strobes or other strobes and you can see it, but we always used to carry two, three or four of them because we knew they would fail. Yeah. But at the end of the day, when you have extended decompression to do, if people have to back off because they don't find their way back to the shop, that puts everybody at risk. and that just can't be allowed. You really have to make that better. And then you look at things like even when you did use these inexpensive strokes where you'd have to have multiple on them. Okay. So it's cheaper to you could buy them because they were fairly inexpensive, but you still had to have more than one of them because you couldn't really rely upon it. It's then how do you attach it to the shot line? If it isn't off the deck high enough up, then it'll just slide down the shot line into the silk and then you don't see it. What was the point? So all these sort of challenges that people find ways to do it with little Snoopy loops and all sorts of other things to do. But there was no concerted effort to find a solution to these problems. And John, I looked at and thought, well, that's crap. Let's do something better. So we brought out stroke. Yeah. And okay, if you're going to make a stroke, then make it the brightest stroke that's ever been in the world, ever for underwater use. Make it fast. Problem with all the strokes that go flash. Speaker 1 Blink and you miss it. Speaker 2 You blink, you miss it. You turn, you miss it. Looking over the shoulder that way. Time you've turned and looked over the other shoulder. You've missed it again. So that tells you you need multiple flash rates so you can choose them. So we brought out our strobe. It has been modified a number of generations on. It's called the Gen X. It's supposed to be generation ten isn't supposed to be Gen X. We coined this Gen X when we started the strobe project. Gen X, as it is now, wasn't a thing like it is on social media. So now we're a bit cringe about that. But it is not about yeah, but by that time and then Covid hit. So the strobe had to go on, put on the back burner while we were doing ventilators. So and now all that's gone. We're now making strobes again. But now it's got the name Gen X. But that was that's nailed into all the packaging before Gen X was a you know, thing. So once you've got a strobe which has got the depth rating, that makes it almost impossible to flood, you have the reliability of that system. You've also got the multiple flash patterns so you can choose where you want high. You know, you also think about adding value to that and saying, okay, so what if we turn it on, but extremely low power so it doesn't burn out the strobe element, but then it's a lamp that you can use as a backup light source for caving or things like this, or just illuminate the instrument. So we did that. But then you have an extremely powerful bright mode which overdrives it, that flashes slowly for search and rescue operation. So it lasts for, you know, how long was it? I got sick of it one hundred and fourteen hours and turned it off. That's long enough. If you haven't been found by then, you're in trouble, right? Yeah. No, I should actually redo it, because I think we'll probably get a lot more than one hundred and fourteen. But it sat on my desk for one hundred and fourteen hours. It's amazing. I remember sitting there all these days flashing something that was a necessity, but saying, well, how do you keep it out of the silt? And obviously we've over the years, people have found ways in order to attach themselves to the shoreline, you know, for different ways. But it was Mike Etheridge from Mike that came up with that on it. Yeah, yeah. It's the, you know, long line fisherman. Yeah. So you got the long line that goes out. But they put the clips on with the bait line and how they attach that. And yet that doesn't move. And he came to us and said, look at that. And we looked at it. That's what you want. And it was so simple. So that is how it's attached. It's just people who know what they're doing have been diving for decades. Like, say, I got an idea, and that becomes part of it. It's the culmination of what you want for your strobe. So he gave us a little box of them and, uh. Yeah, yeah. It works. It works a treat. Yeah, yeah. But we've learned more from mistakes than we have from successes. Yeah. Do people really want to hear about mistakes? Speaker 1 But it's the way you learn. Speaker 2 What have you got? A funny one, you tell us. Speaker 1 Yes. Come on. Tell us some, um, sketchy situations that had a good outcome. Speaker 2 Funny one. Funny ones. All right, but the near-death ones are not so. But, uh. Yeah, I mean, dropping onto a rack, If we only have perfect dives. You don't learn too much, do you? So you do need a few things. Yeah. That's true. I mean, there's a basic. I did a dive in a cave on a single cylinder. It's only in about twenty meters of water. And I had a guide, and it was just like a cavern dive sort of thing. Um, out in, I think. I think I was either in Thailand or India. I can't quite remember. I think it was Thailand and the guides gone in. I got a torch. It was flaky, having to tap it to keep it on. And there's a line that's floating above me and I didn't see it. And I've got my pillow out of court around this line. Before you know it, it's sort of Tang myself up and flipped myself upside down in this cave. And I just saw the light of the guide carrying on. I thought, I'm stuck on this bit of twine in this cave. Anyway, I managed to get myself unhooked and went and struggled into the cave with it to find this guy. And as we're coming back out. So that's already my nerves are up, my tension is up. And as I'm coming out of this cave and the cave mouth was very jagged, so it's obviously a dry cave at some point. Had stalagmites and stalactites sticking down from the and from the back of this cave. After all this adrenaline dump, um, this beautiful deep blue silhouette of the cave mouth and then this massive great thresher shark came in with the big swept tail silhouetted against this brilliant blue. And there wasn't digital cameras at the time. So I've got the camera, and I'm trying to mess with the focus and trying all these things. Uh, one of the most amazing dives that could have ended so badly when we trapped upside down, panicking against a cave roof, and all I got was a blurred blue picture at the end of it. But actually, the dive itself and this amazing blue at the end just made it amazing from what was actually a pretty tricky situation to start with. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Sketchy moments in the water. Yeah, about a couple. Being the crash test dummy for most diving equipment. You know, if we make a prototype bags, fans, of course you have to have a toolkit. If you don't fix it, how do you know it works? Speaker 1 And you're gonna get back when you say. Speaker 2 Yeah, sometimes you have a leak that needs to be repaired there and then. Yeah. So yeah, I can say a few. There's, um. Ah, you know, I'm trying to think of the ones that I can actually say because some of the stuff is so sketchy. You think, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. I can't tell people. Yeah, there's quite a bit of stuff that you think really shouldn't have done that. That was just stupid. What on earth was I thinking? The north east coast of Sunderland in the North Sea. Um, as with a less experienced diver than myself, it's always the case that the most experience always gets the. Yeah. So starting with something else we dropped down at this wreck. Um, I wasn't planning on a wreck penetration, so it didn't line off from the shotline. So tied off. Tied off the shot line, sent up the anchor, tied in the waster usual job, and just swam along the gunwales. And of course, the way it works is that we would. I'd go through the hydrographic survey, and I'd find all the targets for the wrecks that I want to for our expeditions. I then look at it, if it says something like sixty metres long, swept, cleared eight metres, sixty metres long, eight metres high, what? That's going to be a nice wreck and I'll pick that as a target. We'll do a side scan sonar, a sonar sweep over it and if it looks right we'll dive it. Let's find out what it is. And that's expedition. Yeah. That's wreck diving. Right. And that's what I do. So I do all the homework. So finding the snaffles. Finding the Hogarth. This is what I did. I found them because of putting in the homework in hydrographic survey. So we dropped onto this wreck, and it was pretty much intact. It was a good wreck covered in all of the anemones and, you know, and and all the life that you can see. And we dropped in and there's the gunnels. It's upright and intact. It's like, get in. So swim along the gunnels and then just saw this wall in front of us. Now, you know, when you look at a steamer or a cargo ship and you've got a great big superstructure that sits there, look like looks like a supertanker. Yeah. So then all of a sudden, there's this great big wall and you've got the most powerful lights the world has ever seen. These underwater scuba torches that we have. Right. And I think it was a metal sub or something at the time. So this clamp and everything, this great big, huge wall in front of me, that was obviously most of the superstructure. And I'm thinking they're definitely going to be a bell in here somewhere. I'm getting well, excited. The superstructure that big. I don't remember it on sonar, but that big okay. So looking up at it and looking, I'm thinking that's not right. It's something wrong. I've got a lot of helium in, so I know I'm not that. So I'm having a stroke or there's something going on here, and I'm looking at the superstructure and it's breathing, it's moving, it's breathing. It's what? Speaker 1 Net. Speaker 2 Net is a great big giant net, all covered in anemones and everything like that. And it was right in front of us and it was swaying. I was about to go up it into a superstructure. Oh. Ah, yeah. You can imagine how scary that is when you learn how to fin backwards when that happens. Yeah. So I suppose that's one that was definitely a close call, because if I'd made a mistake and actually convinced myself it was a superstructure and went up it. Yeah, you could have brought it down on yourself. That's that's crazy. Um, kind of dangerous, scary stuff. The, um, the first dive on the deep pursuit. It's supposed to be doing this test. Dive shallow in in the harbor and everything, just to test it out, to get it wet for the first time. We didn't have time, so we're going to do it after. And, of course, I've been swapping bits over and, you know, you take the head off and you take the ring out and swap it over and then put it back again. And I've forgotten the ring when I put it back, so I rigged it back for the die because I wasn't going to test the pursuit. So I put it to one side and I left the O ring on the D pursuit instead of on the rebreather, so I assembled it without the main O ring. I left it on the piece of kit I was swapping out with. Stupid mistake, but fine. I made it anyway, so we got to the wreck. You know, skipper shot it. Jumped in. Got down fifty seven meters, sat on the wreck. You do your checks. And there was bubbles coming out of my rebreather. That's. That's not a good sign, right? No. Okay. So I do a few more checks and. Yep, definitely bubbles coming out of this thing. So I give the signal that I'm out of here and I go back up and nobody else came with me because it's a good wreck. Dive, right? I'll be alright. So a solo ascent from fifty seven got back on the boat. Got straight back on the deck. There's only me and the skipper there, you know. So don't be on the bench and crack it open straight away. Because I'm desperate to know. Went wrong and lift it out. And I saw So the O ring was missing. Oh! Damn it. Skipper comes over and says, what's up? I said, I just forgot the o ring. Pulled out the scrubber. It was. It was dry. It was all caught in the water traps, you know. So got away with it kind of thing. Skipper says, you know, it's a really, really long slack today. If you can get it fixed, you can get back in. Oh, really? And of course, you know, I've, I've basically got water in the electronics of this thing, but hey, guess what? I've got a spare set there. So I grabbed the suit, slapped it on, cracked it in, did all my checks in and dropped in the water. And the very first dive on the deep tube ever was in fifty seven meters solo. And it worked flawlessly. And that was the first shearwater control I ever used on a on a rebreather in saltwater. Actually a bit stupid, but yeah, that was that. And the last one will be prototype piece of kit. Prototype rebreather. This rebreather was entirely milled from aluminium, no plastic. This thing cost a fortune. And I have to say to date in my experience and I have dived a lot of rebreathers, I mean. The Mark fifteen fives through the. Speaker 1 Was that to keep it light? Speaker 2 No, no, it was just purely be the best it could be purely the designer of this rebreather just went all out to have the most incredible rebreather that's ever been designed. He designed it and he built it from billet aluminium, machined it out from one piece, the whole thing. It's called the chameleon. At the time. It was designed by by the name of Michael, and he never took it to market because he was a perfectionist and he never finished developing it. I think it was pretty much the problem. There was always something he could do more to make it even better, and he never finished developing rather than just releasing it. But this is probably the best I've ever dived of any rebreather from Mark fifteen five to anything really. Ut2 forty. Yeah, all sorts of stuff. Yeah, the end of world technology. Two forty that was wicked. Well, that's that's a whole nother story. But anyway, so this rebreather would replace the electronics in it. You know, like gives it back. And I'll give you a new one. I've made a new change to it anyway. Got in the water and dropped down and dived this thing a thousand times before. And I got to the bottom of the shotline on the way down. Obviously everything's compressing Diluents flushing in through the auto diluent valve. You know, the gas is getting replaced in the loop very quickly with the trimix and you get down at the bottom, then you stabilize. And I looked at my primary computer and all three PO2 readings were different. That's not a good sign. So look at my secondary. All those are different and different to the primary. So check the head up display. Now I've got nine cell readings and are all reading completely different. Oh dear. That's suboptimal. Right. So you do a diluent flush straight away. Let's see which of these sensor readings is correct. You do a quick bit of mental calculations because you know what a diluent flash flush at that depth should actually read only PO2 and none of them read correctly. No sensors reading correctly, no handsets reading correctly, and nothing matching. Here's the thing. I stopped logging dives at my one thousandth closed circuit trimix rebreather dive. Wow. Just stop logging then. You tend to get very much in sync with the equipment you design and build. Yeah, you know that your solenoid flows at seventeen liters a minute when it's flat out for the opener. That interstage pressure. You know this because you've designed it. You built it. You also know how much oxygen you metabolize. So you know how much can go in. So you know that on the flow rate of this solenoid, on the flow of that valve I can put in, if I hold it open for one second, I know that that is so much of a liter of oxygen. You know, your metabolic rate is. So if I do a diluent flush and I want to bring that PO2 up to one point three. And if I open the O2 valve for one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, I know between one point one five and one point four five. Okay, so you do five or six fin strokes and then you do another flush. Then you hit it again from maximum operational depth right up to six meters. I flew it manually based upon an internal mental calculation for PO2 based on flow rates of orifice and knowing what my diluent valve, I guess. And I made it all the way up to six liters and then ran it as a pure O2 rebreather. And the way I did that with with no PO2 readouts is that if you flushed your loop entirely with pure oxygen and you have perfect neutral buoyancy as you metabolize oxygen, you will then reduce the loop volume, won't you? Therefore you'll sink, I'm telling you. So I was actually controlling PO2 by my depth in the water if I made exactly six meters. Yeah, that's one point six two. If I maintain perfect neutral buoyancy with a perfectly flushed loop. Some calculation probably. Most people don't do that. They just go hand flapping, panic and missile. But that is exactly that, isn't it? Because, you know and not everyone be able to do that type of. Speaker 1 Mentally. Speaker 2 Capability. Don't treat that calm to keep calm. Yeah pure O2 flush and your maximum CNS loading that you want. You're going to be working at one point six PO2. So if you've got pure O2 in the loop at six metres it's got to be one point six PO2, right? Yeah. So if I've got perfect neutral buoyancy, it's six metres after a proper O2 flush and I hold it, it must be perfect. So if I drop I need to add add O2 so you can maintain your PO2 by your height in the water column. Speaker 1 And how long did you have to stay at six metres. Speaker 2 I didn't want to get bent, so I just rode it out and rode it out. Rode it out until I got bored. So you do a calculation based upon. Okay, what's my maximum load and how much do I want to do this? And it's a bounce dive, so you really shouldn't have loaded up more than a few minutes. So if I put twenty, twenty five minutes of time in at six meters, then I'm bound to get out, okay? Yeah. Stupid. Not very wise, but it worked out in the end. So then, of course, you know, you get out of the water and you wonder what was wrong with it. So, of course, on the bench I sat in there, which, like I said, is this is the first failure of its kind. This rebreather was incredible. It really was probably the most advanced and fault tolerant rebreather I've ever had. Like this perfect buoyancy. The whole thing was just superb. It's PO2 control was perfect. Anyway, put it on the bench. Said it worked perfectly. What the hell's going on? Absolutely perfect. As soon as you got in the water, it failed. Here's what happened? There was a short circuit between the solenoid and the casing. Remember, this rebreather was built out of aluminium or plastic. There was no insulator. So when the solenoid control short circuited, its electronics went short circuited. When it fired the solenoid, it put seven volts on the solenoid, which then went into the water through the casing. The zero volt rail, the wet switches of the computer was telling you whether you were in the water or not. Now where that works is that small amount electrical current goes through those two little contacts on the computer to say I'm submerged in saltwater because some current will pass. Yeah. So the solenoid was putting power in the water, but it's from the same battery that powers the computer. So the power when the water was now a circuit with the seawater to the computer, which hit the wet switch with a bit of power from the solenoid, which raised the voltage level of the of the wet switch, which told the computer what zero volts now is not zero volts because it's added power to it, which meant every single one of those cells We're trying to measure the millivolts from the cell against the zero volts source. It's not zero anymore. It's not zero anymore. It's raised it so it couldn't tell what the PO2 was when it wasn't in saltwater, when it wasn't firing the solenoid, it was correct. And I had no idea what was going on. So I'm looking at this rebreather thinking it's working perfectly here, but it didn't work in the water. And I'm absolutely angry trying to figure this out. So I brought the rebreather back and dumped it on the bench with John, said John, I can't figure out what's wrong with this. And he looked at it and the my flex hose that went to the solenoid from the O2 supply regulator had no chrome on it. It had been stripped bare brass. And John looked at it and said, it's reverse electroplated because we saw one fitting that had all its plating missing. I said, oh yeah, you saw. Speaker 1 That happened underwater and. Speaker 2 Power onto a piece of metal in the water. It'll either plate or it'll evacuate the plating from it. And you'll notice that all the electroplating, all the chrome plating that come off the hose, he said, well, there you go. It's short circuited. Speaker 1 Just like that. Speaker 2 And that was about to be a rabbit hole that you could go down for hours and hours. Diagnostic of the understanding of these things that you two have got. Speaker 1 Um. Speaker 2 There's three stories of shit that just happens, right? Yeah. Shit happens. It's always the one about. So there's a rebreather called the P1's. The piss rebreather. Okay. It's a it's a home built piece of gas pipe. And my friend, his name is digger. We called him digger. Now I'm going to be his safety diver. And this rebreather is made of gas pipe. An old, really old horse collar. Um, buoyancy aid. Maybe a mouthpiece made out of thirty two mil waste pipe fittings from being Q. So we actually called the being being Q was our rebreather spares department. So we've made this this whole jury rigged rebreather for him. And he says, um, you'll be my safety diver for the day. And I said, yeah, fine. And so we're in the water, and he's got this stupid contraption hanging around his neck, and I'm sticking close to him just to make sure there's no problems. And then all of a sudden I see his arms go limp, and he started doing a shoulder roll on one side. So I grabbed it, grabbed him and pulled him close, looked into his mask, and then he smiles at me. He thought it was hilarious to fake an issue, so I slapped him around the head really good and hard. And as we got out of the water, he stood up and the weight of the equipment, the hoses just fell out from the mouthpiece. It's basically the whole rebreather self-destructed as he stood up. No flair that day when you're pushing the boundaries. Yeah, that's a problem. At some point you can you can test and test and test and lab test as much as you can. But at some point you've still got to get in the water. And do you think there'll be as time go on. And you know, we see hybrid rebreathers don't we. You know, do you think there'll be a, a another generation of rebreathers. There'll be some new science. Yeah. I mean there's certainly some new products out now that we've been working with uh, with Halcyon and um, they've got a wireless sensor readings, um, which is going to be quite a big thing. There's a few hurdles to come over with integration. Um, but actually that's that's pretty much that's pretty big. Yeah. So no cables down your arms anymore for your rebreathers. Yeah. Speaker 1 And that's when you say integration into other dive computers or. Speaker 2 Into other systems. No, it'll be the, it'll be the, um, the Halcyon computer. That's it's part of that ecosystem where they have quite a lot of wireless development stuff. So they've got wireless GPS, tilt sensors, um, in so transmitters with tilt sensors in. So you have your trim. Speaker 1 So it tells you whether you're. Speaker 2 On the water or not. Yeah. Well divers like Kit don't they. And you know a lot of divers do like stats don't they. And I think if you've got a machine that somehow gives you that feedback, and I think most divers have that little geeky geekiness of it. And it's quite it's quite strange when you look at social media. And I can put a really relevant post on, on our Facebook, and it'll be a little blurb about something that people need to know. And it's important that you understand this blurb that I'm putting out there, and you get one or two clicks on it, and I can put a photograph up of a load of my kit dumped on the floor in the house, and they'll be full rebreathers there and an aqua scooter and some, some other thing we're working on. And all of a sudden you get ten thousand people wanting to have a look at it. People just like to have a look at Kit. What about gases? What about gases? Because we've gotten quite a bit of. No. Not trouble. But, Brent, um, there'll be more exploration on gases back in the early days. I did that. You see, we're always looking to try and push the envelope a little bit less now than I'm a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit less stupid. Right. But of course, wisdom comes with age, right? Speaker 1 Okay. Speaker 2 So in the early days, we did a lot of development. I broke a world record for underwater human endurance in the early two thousand. So spending time underwater, it's quite cool. And in one segment. Yeah. Single longest time underwater on a single tank. How long? How long? Six hours. Thirty one minutes and eight seconds. At the time it's broken. It was just as long as you were submerged. She broke the world record. I did it for charity. Oh, okay. It's actually the world. It's been broken since, but nevertheless, it's the kind of stupid stuff that we did. You know, it's like sponsored drowning, you know, stupid. But then, so we do stuff, and, you know, it's back in the early days of the Bob Howells Bob's bits for rebreathers. I mean, that guy was a genius of things. He made, you know, the bailout valves, you know, they just weren't known about, you know, cave divers were the jokey things like that. It was the development of necessity. And let's face it, it is the development of necessity, you know, the economy of poverty to those kind of things that you didn't have it, so you made it. Yeah. There's nothing more fun in those days, I think. So John made he made a full face mask for his rebreather. I think I'd never seen one before. That was in conjunction with Inspira at the time, with one of their development teams. Um, so we fitted a bailout valve and made it for closed circuit, which is what they were aiming for on the full face, which is cool. But then you have the issue there of through water communication. And we we've worked recently um, in defense applications on through water comms under what mode and stuff like that. It's quite cool. But back then, your problem there was the especially if you're going deep, then you've got helium voice. Speaker 1 Squeaky voice. Speaker 2 Exactly. So communication is difficult. It's it's a problem with commercial divers, right? And there were a few bits of research that were done on different gases in order to able to alleviate that problem. And back then I was diving neo quad and neox because neon has a lot of the advantages of helium. So the same so neon, the same gas that we see in lights. What you see in those nice, you know, glowing signs outside a bar somewhere. Yeah. So you're breathing that. Yeah. Wow. So trimix plus neon neo quad or just neon and oxygen neox. But then you have the same molecule kind of size as nitrogen. So you've got the you don't have the squeaky voice, but the solubility similar to that, that offsets your issues with narcosis. Unfortunately, the gas is quite expensive two thousand quid a cylinder at the time. But that's then I wonder what it would be now. For now, it's just okay. I had access and it was worth a try. So with full face and comms. Okay, let's. It just led you on the next step, which is okay. How can we make comms work then. Mhm. Yeah. But I think uh, after you sort of see the price of that gas once you've got through your thinking. Well another two thousand quid so I can have some gas again, that's a bit too much but I'm guessing that you both have to be on it, don't you. Because otherwise you'd be able to speak. And the other person what the problem was, it was either the boat or diver to to vessel. So your comms, you know, they're trying to understand what you're saying and all they're hearing is squeaks from you, right, I got you. Yeah. I guess you can do diver to diver as well. But yeah, it wasn't done with that in mind at the time. Of course, nowadays I'm with you. I mean you can vocalize to a loop anyway. And on helium you kind of get used to that voice. You know. Speaker 1 Your ears are just. Yeah. Speaker 2 I think the software as well, that can change the tone and bring it an octave or two down. Yeah. Back in the nineties there wasn't. No, no. Yeah. So Brent Brent experimented quite a lot in gas supply ran out of from that cylinder. But there was always a worry that if you got bent, um, you might not be able to get unbent unless you were doing in-water recompression with the gas that you're on the same mixture. Yeah. Um, I don't think there was any. There's never going to be a chamber that's going to hold that sort of gas to help you get unbent. So it's best guess in table two. Yeah, but that's that's quite a risk. I know there was there's numerous people that have tried over the years. I haven't heard of anybody doing it for a very long time. It was mainly Defense University and did I see something about from Simon Mitchell about the hydrogen in the rebreathers recently, I think. Um, I might not be wrong to look into who it was. They were doing something deep, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Can't remember it was Simon Mitchell properly. That's the sort of side of things. He's a legend. He just goes into all sorts of stuff, isn't he? Yeah. Very clever. If it wasn't for people like them, we wouldn't have the kind of exploration that we have now. Speaker 1 No, but there are new divers coming into the industry that are furthering their journey down the from recreational to technical that need you because they will still be wanting to further their journeys and get better equipment. Speaker 2 Mhm. Now they just need to take notice of what those people are doing. So you look at the Richard Stephenson's the you know Rick and Joan and Simon. There's a lot of amazing dogs out there. I mean, so many people you've had on your podcast yourself. Yeah. Mount Dixon has another one. Darkstar diving. I mean, he's kind of saw them as rivals back then because they were doing some amazing dives and we were trying to do the same sort of stuff, and they're still doing it now. Yeah, I suppose a lot of this technology is now plateaued because of the manufacturers who've who are now making them. Uh, the technology hasn't now carried on. There hasn't been any quantum leaps. No, certainly early days, it was easy to invent stuff because there was not much out there. So there was lots of things you could do to move things forward. Now, you know, the market is quite saturated with these things. The technology is now when it's plateaued. Yeah. It's got so good that it doesn't. There's not much further you can push. Yeah. When Apple first brought out the whole screen fact. And I was like, wow, yeah, you don't need you don't need buttons anymore to fourteenth. I'm thinking there's nothing that I can see in the new phones that makes me want to upgrade. I mean, when we do talk about the innovation side of this, that. Yeah, there was a lot. We were known as the innovators twenty years ago. It's not that we haven't continued to. It's not that we stopped innovating. It's just that there has been a plateau. But the new technologies that are coming out now where we're going to be able to dump cables, this is what we're most excited about. In the late nineties, early two thousand, we pioneered the rebreather interface, where you could use a third party computer on a rebreather, so you could have your the manufactured rebreather made by whichever company that you were diving with. You could plug in a third party computer and it would in parallel, monitor the PO2 and your decompression profiles at the same time. We pioneered that, the three cell monitoring system and stuff, the integration of third party electronics into a manufactured rebreather was pretty much what we were known for. We pioneered it. We made it. The issues with that is, and obviously down that technological route, if you are using a cable system to wire a third party piece of electronics into that rebreather, what happens if you cut the cable on a piece of wreckage? When you wreck that and you short those cables together, will you then take out the rebreathers control system? So you had to design a system which interfaced this, but had what we would call isolation. So if you cut the cable, even if you short circuited that cable, that you wouldn't take out that. And we pioneered and invented the isolation system. The completely electrically separates the monitor from the primary. So no matter what happened with multiple fault tolerance, that you couldn't compromise the safety of that rebreather. What is the point in having a backup system for safety if it then compromise the original system. So you have to have multiple fault tolerance on that. And we designed that with the new systems that we're looking at now that we're hoping to ensure is pioneered, the wireless systems where you no longer have to have that cable, then it seems only logical that we pioneer the application of integration into existing rebreathers and existing equipment, so that the new technology can be available to those who are already divers. But then people who are buying a brand new rebreather who are starting off can then gain the benefit of buying a rebreather with this already built in from the manufacturer. So you create technology demonstrators. Now a demonstration in bed, if you will, that shows that that technology is capable and works and is safe so that it can be adopted by the rest of industry. And that's kind of where we are at the moment. So we're building the technology demonstrators. We're proving that it can be put in there, allowing it to be accessible by those who are already existing drivers and promoting it as the safer way forward for those who are. Speaker 3 So our business is coming to you or can come to you if they're not ready, if they've got like an idea or they've got current, uh, equipment and they want to improve it, can they come to you for that as a like consultant? Speaker 2 Exactly that. And there are major defence suppliers who came to us and said, can you make us one of these? And we made it. Then they say, look, um, that really worked out well. Can you make twenty and can you send them to this specific place in America? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we have companies come to us. Yeah. Speaker 3 Because you got the setup here. Yeah. To make stuff and produce stuff. Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, we're lucky enough that we've got labs downstairs. We've got machine shop lathes, mills, um, loads of lasers sitting around here. Okay. Um. Which is my toys. You'll often find me just playing around with lasers, trying not to shoot yourself in the face again. Um, but, yeah, we have a lot of companies come to us. Um, we do a lot of certification for for companies, so it's not nice to use one side, but we also have a certification company for CE and UK CE marking. Yeah. Um, so we're, we're sort of a third party audit for quite a lot of companies. Um, so we have dive computers that come through here for, for an audit, for certification. Um, when they require third party testing, a. Speaker 3 Lot of dive computers. Speaker 2 That are on the market today have been certified by machinery Safety and Compliance Services. And our sister companies, coming back from the early days of Liquid Vision Liquid, we did all the liquid vision computers, um, did all the computers over the years. Yeah, there's yeah, there's a lot there's there's people we can't talk about. Yeah. And there's people that we can um, liquid vision is not around anymore. Um, but. yeah, that was fun. It was fun. Yeah, we smashed quite a bit of it. Um, there's some fun tests that have to be done for computers, and one of them is basically smashing it with a hammer falling sledgehammer. Call it a sabot. That's actually just. Yeah, basically, it's a massive swing hammer for kicking computers around the room. Um, which is normally entertaining. Speaker 3 And see if it works. Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, we have to. Yeah, they have to go through a whole load of, um, freezing heating, hundreds of pressure tests, and then at the end of it, once you've frozen it, then we have to hit it with a three kilo hammer. One of the test has to do with John loves this test, is that it has to do two hundred repetitive dives to one hundred and fifty percent of its maximum operational depth, and it has to be at a certain descent rate and a certain ascent rate, which means John has to personally man a chamber and increase the pressure and decrease the pressure two hundred times at that ascent rate and descent rate, and make sure that we don't have any failures or inaccuracies at the end. And we actually ended up building a fully automated test system where we have our own PLC controlled. We wrote our own PLC program for it. We have a full programmable logic computer controlled test facility because in the early days there were valves opening and closing and timers on and off, and the test takes twenty four hours. So it's a twenty four hour non-stop stint. Wow. To be able to test those computers. So after a while I've got to automate this. This is this is what's. Speaker 3 The maximum depth we can do test. Speaker 2 To now. Um, four hundred meters as a as a norm. Um, we tend not to use that chamber because it's quite a lot of involvement, lots of bolts to hold big windows down. Um, so we normally test about twenty five bar, which is the normal day to day stuff for us. Um, but we can push much harder. But the, the chamber is a different chamber and it's a lot more complex. Complex? Yeah, it's a lot more of a setup, a lot more scary once you start to get into the really high pressure stuff. But that's where we can stay. You know, this drug is rated to one thousand feet because it's been tested to it. He sends a computer for repair. Then we can say, you know, it's been for twenty five atmospheres. Yeah. I mean, we do have some of the cave divers. It's normally or people going for world records, and they'll send a kit to us to do a deep pressure test on them first. Make sure they're not going to leak. Make sure they're not going to fail at the depth, because most of the manufacturers of this kit will certify it to a depth. Yeah, normally because of the accuracy of a pressure sensor or some other component that could fail after that depth. So the real deep stuff people will bring, it comes in here and we'll do a deep test on it. Speaker 3 Just it was it's an example because the shearwater computer, although I think it was Paul Rainmakers did like a three hundred meter dive. He took it down to three hundred meters before it, you know, it had issues or it might have even passed that down. Speaker 2 I think I think the Special Forces guy, he he did about Steve three thirty three thirty six or something like that. It sticks in my head. Its crush depth is different from its depth where the pressure sensor itself becomes inaccurate. So, for example, it might say it's accurate up to one hundred and fifty meters, for example. I'm not saying it is. Just for example, if you will. But then beyond that it loses accuracy because it wasn't made to do that. Now it might actually end up being perfectly accurate down to three hundred meters, you know. But it's only tested to its maximum depth for accuracy and for CE. Speaker 1 But you could test it further. Speaker 2 I mean, we've tested computers way, way, way, way past what the manufacturers would like them or need them to be tested at or for divers. And this accuracy of pressure sensors generally is pretty good, but they can't guarantee it. So it might be good on that one that you've tested. If it's tested another one hundred, you might have some that wander off. But it's only taken down to fifty. They'll be spot on. Yeah. No doubt computer we've ever tested has been that shallow. Yeah. I mean, if you're saying, say plus or minus one percent up to one hundred and fifty metres. Yeah. That's where your certification ends. It might actually be plus or minus five percent to three hundred. Would you really care and know exactly. And no one's going to go down there anyway so I don't know. Yeah. People yeah people do. Apart from the specialists who can. But for the ninety nine percent everything starts becoming theoretical. Yeah. For that. Yeah. And you have to equip yourself appropriately with your margins and a backup. As they say, two is one. One is none if it's mission critical. Good saying that. Yeah, yeah, it's mission critical. And you've only got one. You have to assume you haven't got any. Speaker 1 It doesn't. Speaker 2 Work. So always have two. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Or more computers. That's what we say in service of getting service. That's the biggest thing now is. So, um, I think we've tried to inform the world, um, people get upset about this. So there's dive computers that have gone out of service. Um, in this case, we'll just talk about some of the shearwaters. Um, what people don't realize is how small a market the market is. And electronics supplier or electronics manufacturer of components. Things come and go and technology moves on all the time, and they just make things make things obsolete with no alternative to change that. A screen, an OLED screen on a predator, um, it just all of a sudden disappeared from the market. The manufacturer stopped doing it and you couldn't get them. So shearwater had to build a new computer to get around that. The screen is not available anymore. Supply chain issues. Yeah. And the diving market doesn't even figure anywhere in electronics companies market. No. So you have no sway. You know, if you went to that market and said, I want ten thousand screens, they go, yeah, is that all you want? You know, you don't figure in their in their figures at all. So things get made obsolete. And it's not the manufacturer of that computer's fault. It's a manufacturer components problem. And you don't know about it until you next time you go to order that component. Um, but that happens all the time. And anybody who's involved in industry where there are electronic components will know this. Now, a lot of the people who listen to this podcast probably do work for other companies, whether it be electronics companies or companies that use electronics. I mean, you just take the automotive industry and we we used to manufacture parts for cars in lighting, which is one of the electronics that gets, you know, part of our businesses. And so we we do everything for everybody. Yeah. Um, and that lighting, how many times do we have to redesign the lighting because of obsolete. We've redesigned the boards twice because they made an LED. An automotive LED was made redundant, And there wasn't another replacement. You think LEDs are everywhere, right? They just discontinued this automotive component. So we went to restock and buy another twenty thousand LEDs. They go, no. Can't get any more. Speaker 1 So then you've got to go back to the drawing board and start again. Speaker 2 Yeah. Start again and then go through testing again because you change these components. So that's happened twice. Yeah. And it's the same for servicing. Servicing is now more important than it was before. Um but it's always been important. If you don't look after your computer, you'll end up flooding it. Speaker 1 So somebody that's got one of these old computers, it's more important to get it serviced. Speaker 2 Very good computer. That's fine. Yeah, we can service it now, but if you damage the electronics, that's it. Scrap. So service it for the price of a, you know, one hundred quid service every couple of years. Your computer is going to last for years. We can only hold on to the those spare parts, those historical spare parts for so long. Now, obviously, there is a requirement to keep electronics serviceable for a number of times for a number of years. And there's even legislation throughout the UK and Europe which relates to that, to keeping it serviceable because we don't want to have to scrap things and it's a waste, isn't it? It's not environmentally friendly at all. So to keep things going, it's a necessity for that. But this legacy equipment can't be kept going forever on spare parts before that spare part has been exhausted. Yeah. So if you do flood that computer, you can't get a replacement part for that board. You take the the old pursuit, the very first shearwater that was mainstream. The pursuit is still an incredibly good computer. I don't believe the algorithm for decompression has changed much. No, no, I don't think so. And we still actually have parts for this old shearwater pursuit. But there are parts that we scavenged over the years, and rather than throw them in the bin, we kept them. So now we have a bag electronics. Speaker 1 So if somebody out there. Speaker 2 I can still work on it. I can still fix your pursuit for you. Where I can't fix some of the newer computers, because the parts have been made obsolete and we've brought as much as we could get. And it's got to the point now where there is no components left. Speaker 1 So basically, that diver has to go and buy a new computer. Speaker 2 A new computer, yeah, for the sake of a couple of quid. So get it serviced. We can we can still do that for now. But that will come to a crunch point as well where those parts are not available. So it's not the manufacturer's fault. I should have bought my Perdix up to get that service, because I haven't got into the lab and they would have done it. So while you wait service for you. Yeah, yeah. And it's a shame. I don't want to see any computer go out service. No, I mean, I have all the shearwaters right from zero right from the very beginning. Um, and I pride ourselves on trying to keep them running for people. But it's, it's got to that point now where it's just not going to happen much longer. Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's important to have a piece of equipment that you know and like using as well. So rather than keep moving to the next model, the next model, it's absolutely. Speaker 2 But of course, as far as the servicing and the lab downstairs is concerned, we carry out servicing and repair on so much. So your ratio computer that ratio computers, computers, all the legacy shearwater computers um Halcyon lighting, Aston Martin rear lights on occasion Aston Martin. Yeah. Well, it's part of the lighting that we make. Um, was for Aston Martin. So, um, we made sequential lighting. So all of these weird and wonderful things that sort of turn up. Nothing is part of a group that John and I, um, have been leading for a while. So you've got compliance services and after nineteen ninety, um, sensor solutions, stuff like this. Exactly. Now we have supplied our products and services to a number of different projects and clients, starting with the dreadnought class submarine. These two class submarine. The rear fuselage of the F-35. The new challenger three tank. These are our clients. Red bull's F1 simulator. We certified it alpine F1, you name it. We've pretty much done it over the years. So our client base is actually fairly significant. I mean, you can see the pictures on the wall, the patches, you know, the H60 4D coming out. Speaker 1 And this is probably what a lot of people don't realize about the not at ninety name, that just how powerful you know you are. Speaker 2 And we do things that are interesting to us. So it's not always the diving industry that we work in, you know, um, if it interests us, we'll go down a little spiral into, into another industry and all of a sudden another company and they have need for us. So we go and help. Yeah. And some days you feel like you've made a difference. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. And that's all the stuff that people don't see. You know what goes on in the background or we don't make a big noise about. Uh, so we're not just a dive shop. Most people like when you come here, you come, you walk around the factory here and you go. It's always weird and wonderful things going on. It's an interesting place to be. Yeah. Uh, let's say downstairs. At the moment, we're making new strobes, but other weeks, you never know what's going to be retuned. Um, out of some exotic materials. Yeah, yeah, this is going to be used inside a submarine, and we can't have certain offgassing. Therefore, it must be made out of this. Therefore, can you make this rebreather out of this specific material that we seem deemed to be. Speaker 1 Safe and not safe? Yeah. Speaker 2 Okay. Mhm. Yeah. That kind of thing. That's interesting. Where are we going to get this material from John. Never heard of it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we're we're an unusual company with what we do and what we get involved in. Yeah, but that keeps it interesting for for all of us here as well. Yeah. And if you just make one product and all you do is make that product here day in, day out. I'd be bored. Really, really bored. How many people have you got at work here now? Fourteen. Fourteen. I think it's seventeen. Sorry. Yeah. You're right. Aren't you fourteen. Seventeen. It might be a shop floor. How many? How many on the shop floor? There's one machine in there at the moment. There's a few in the lab. Uh, the sales team, which we share, um, labor between all the companies. So all our accounts team for all the companies are the same people. We've got managers here that share responsibilities between the companies. So any one person can be off, and there's other people that can cover. So you never have that one point of failure. Speaker 1 It's like diving, isn't it? Speaker 2 It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard one um, things as well. You know, don't buy an old server from eBay. Uh, and then hope to be reliable. And we've loads of things have failed here over the years. Um, and staff can be that one of those failure points as well. So any one point everybody can cover most other people's jobs. Yeah. Which is why pretty much everybody in all the businesses are divers. And if you're not a diver, we'll pay for you to be a diver. Mm. Most of them, not all people here are divers. Um, but they all get the offer. If you want to get a try, diver or sling you in the deep end of the swimming pool, and, uh, some of them have carried on. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, some some of the lab staff, when they, they see so many stories of, uh, we get equipment in to be looked at, you know, maybe a rebreather, and they're shocked at the state of some kit comes in and they go, why would you dive? What's wrong with these people? So you can have an electronics board that needs to be diagnosed. You have the diagnostics on that. You can do the work on to repair this computer. And you can look at it from a semiconductor, an embedded technology point of view, and you'll be great at that. But if you don't understand the purpose behind it of the diver and what their wants and needs are, then how can you give the full service? So you might be an electronics guru and have a master's degree in that, but I will still send you on a diving course and turn you into a diver that is still learning. Basic physics is a big help if you're working with computers. You know you need to understand what those numbers mean and the correlation between whatever test we're doing and those numbers. So I mean, that's important, but that's all taught. But everybody here is passionate about what they do. And everybody enjoys working here as well. We've got a really good team. Uh, some of them have been here, what, fourteen, fifteen years? They're sort of embedded themselves well. Speaker 1 Loving a job that you do is the most important bit. Exactly. It doesn't feel like a job then. Speaker 2 Always leaves a bad company. Bad company? You always have a bad manager, right? So give people the ability to find mastery. Yeah. Let them find self directions. If they have a good idea, why shouldn't they not be allowed to explore that? Yeah. And have a purpose. Yeah. And if they can handle my sense of humor, I think it's a good measure. If you've got people here who stayed here fourteen, fifteen years. It's a good measure in itself, you know, because if that's the case, people wouldn't stay here longer. Yeah, but people only put up with so much for so long. Yeah. I mean, I've got people here. They'll come in at the weekend just because they wanted to get something else done. They never been asked to do it. They're not forced to do it. Um. Ownership. Ownership. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, you know, having people come to us with their issues is a good thing. Yeah. Having people come to us with their technology and saying, you know what, if you could integrate this, if you could help us with this, you know, Kevin coming to us with the optical interface saying, can I have some help? Yeah, yeah. Great guy works for Avon now. He's a wealth of knowledge. People like that. They don't grow on trees. Yeah. So we've talked about individuals and your relationship with individuals. Uh, not the relationship with individuals. What about dive sentence? Because with dive centers for the new divers, um, who are listening to this, who maybe, um, you know, their first step into dive and their first face, if you like, of diving world will be the dive centers. Do the dive centers, do you think the dive. What sort of relationship do you have with dive centers? Yeah, we have we have a lot of dealers worldwide, maybe one hundred and fifty, two hundred dealers worldwide. Um, so I guess we are there. Um, we don't have loads of big flashy banners, you know, hanging on walls. That's generally, you know, we don't really make anything for beginner divers. We don't do the snorkels and rings and all that sort of stuff. We've always sort of left that to dive shops where you want to go in, you want to try the kit on, have a swimming pool, that kind of stuff. We don't have it, but we know we've never really got into doing that. Speaker 1 But you supply sheer water or dive computers to these dive centers, visiting. Speaker 2 Those those retailers, those dive centers. They do such a good job of accommodating those people who are first getting into it. There's such a breadth of equipment which suits different people. Yeah, that we tend to find that we're a specialist and our focus is on the specialization of that next step. We wouldn't pretend to be the kind of people who can help those with the first step. And when you look at those instructors and those dive centers who have made a career out of ensuring that they provide that service, which is appropriate for people who have no sense of direction as to where they're going to go into scuba. Will it be holiday diving? Will it be first doing inland water enclosed, you know, confined space diving, or are they going to be doing open water or club or are they going to take a more commercial route. The opportunities to those are so wide. You need to have people who understand that who've grown up with it and continue to service that. And I would never want to take away from those dive centers and instructors who live and breathe this every single day. And the issues they have with that, we know a lot of them. We have a great deal of understanding of the challenges that they face. And we're just simply not experts in that. If you came to us for advice, we'll give you the advice. We'll give you the the knowledge and experience that we have and try and pass it on so that you can learn from our mistakes, because that's what we've learned from. But essentially, those centers, it's not our fault. Speaker 4 A lot of those dive centers now, and, uh, I'm sure we'll be looking at how they bring divers on from open waters through, uh, their diving career and then potentially into tech diving. Speaker 2 Well, that's another thing. What do you define as technical diving? Because back in the eighties and 90s, technical diving was very simple for us to define okay. It was very straightforward. Although you might have slight nuance of argument over, you know, exactly where technical diving fell on definition. We all had a very much broadly the same definition. Today that is almost impossible to define. Um, But certainly when you look at a diver today who is not what you'd call technical, he's doing air diving on open circuit and is enjoying that recreational diving in the way that they should do. And and God, I wish there was more of them. I really do. But when they look forward and they say, I want to go a little bit further, I want to take water a bit longer and they choose to then do nitrox. So they're going to change gas. Almost every dive computer in the world today is going to allow you to change from air to enhanced air nitrox. Yeah of course it is helium diving. What people are afraid of that. And there's a lot technically which goes into learning how to dive helium. But once you go beyond thirty or forty meters, I would never get in the water without helium because of its advantages. And as soon as you go closed circuit, the cost of diving helium suddenly drops off massively and becomes the equipment is way higher. It suddenly then becomes a why wouldn't you dive helium? Yeah. You know, and anybody who's who's ever got in the water and gone beyond forty meters, who knows how it feels when you're on air, is going to know the benefits of diving helium when you get to that point where you're looking towards that and thinking, hmm, do I or don't I? People tend to mystify it. I don't know whether it's because it's they like the the mystery of I'm a technical diver and this is there's a little bit of chest beating and making it a bit mystique because I'm a technical diver. I think part of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I don't think really that's that should be the case. I think it should be open and transparent. They should see it actually as a natural progression. So why is it so difficult to get helium. It isn't. And you see some of these instructors and you see the ethics that they have. I mean, I remember diving off Malin Head going out and doing some of the wrecks out in the North Atlantic there with Richard Stevenson on the Royal Watcher, and now he's going back some, some time. You know, that was a hell of a boat. And you see the way the constructors operated when they're teaching people in mod one, mod two, mod three, I have a lot of respect for that. I couldn't do it. But those kind of people should be held in high regard. And these these divers, these recreational divers should be pointed towards instructors like those to say, can we speak to them? Speaker 1 They've got the passion and the inspiration to take these people further. Speaker 2 Exactly. And that's I think, is the dive center. It is their responsibility to know how to point people towards that progression, to make this a bigger recreational environment, for people to get. Speaker 4 Those dive centers to the support when they do take those people on. Speaker 2 Mhm. Maybe, I mean a lot of these dive centers, they'll only have beginner equipment. Speaker 1 Yes. Speaker 2 And they want to sell you that beginner equipment and then sell you the next piece of equipment after you bought the blue one. Um, where a lot of them. And one guy said to me many, many years ago, um, I don't see the point in stocking anything technical. He says, I don't see any point. There's no who goes technical diving. I said, well, all of us want to do. Mhm. Um, he said, but you want but don't buy anything for my shop. I said, because you don't stock any of it. I said if you don't have it, people are not going to come to you for you if they only know that you sell pink, fluffy snorkels. That's that's the only people you're going to get. Speaker 1 Yeah. And then those divers are either stunted and they're not going to move on, or they go somewhere else. Speaker 2 Somewhere else. Yeah, it is actually right that they. There should be more. Now, the thing is, there's not a high turnover of that technical equipment in a shop. Mhm. So it is going to be a something which will sit there which is not ideal. You know you look at other hobbies and you take something like motor vehicles that will go into the shop where we can buy our staple products for the car wash, stuff like this. You know what I'm talking about. But then there'll be other companies there where it starts off with just the slight sporting and goes right the way through to the most elite sporting. You take companies like Demon Tweeks. You'll walk in there just because you want a small widget that takes you just to step number one. Yeah. You stood next to the guy who goes British Touring Car Championship every single month. Mhm. They carry all of it. But if you don't if you don't see that stuff then you don't know that you wanted that stuff. Exactly. And you'll keep on going back to your pink fluffy snuggle. Speaker 1 Yeah. Or not going any further or give up. So yeah. So you need the inspiration there to take people further. Speaker 2 I think technicals far bigger now. I mean, back in the day, if you said you went to eighty meters, everybody go, wow. You know that's really, really deep and it is deep. But compared to what people do day to day here now eighty metres a year. Yeah. Only eighty metres. Yeah. So where do you class. Technical. Because that's a sliding bar. As technology moves on and more people are or are technical diving those boundaries are pushed does have to be made more accessible. You know what the thing is? Everything shouldn't just be black because it's technical. Know it can be shiny to. Speaker 4 Be pink. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 4 They almost. Speaker 1 Black. Yeah. Speaker 2 But I always said I wasn't going to sell anything pink. And uh, my, my flex brought out a pink hose and they phoned me and says, are you going to stop pink hoser? I'm never going to sell pink stuff. He said, well, look, okay, just put it on the website. So I put it on the website. And the very same day I sold a bloody hose. Now. What's the matter with a pink hose? If it ain't black or shiny. Didn't want it. I like pink. SNB. Speaker 1 Okay. Speaker 2 We've been there. Speaker 1 Before. Well, I think that helps people's understanding of narcotic ninety and where you've started, where the middle bit and where you're going to in the future. Speaker 2 Next time we release all the details of all the things that have gone wrong in the dives, the things that we wouldn't normally tell you. Speaker 1 So there will be another podcast. Speaker 2 Yeah. Podcast. Yeah. Sketchy diving? Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. No, I think obviously that would appeal to people as well. But yeah, it's all a learning journey. Speaker 2 Well, other people can learn from our mistakes. That's just how many of those mistakes do I want people to know that I've done. Mhm. Speaker 1 But there'll be other divers out there that are making mistakes as we speak. Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is I guess with the dining industry people, this information doesn't come out because people are worried about what other people think or say. So they keep it quiet. And then nobody learns. Yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah. Don't see many instructional videos on how to use a lift bag these days. Speaker 4 Yeah, it's not politically. Speaker 2 Correct. Speaker 4 Uh, I think some of the ghost. Speaker 1 For the right reasons. Speaker 4 Teacher, I think I think they do. Part of the training is how to put them up. I think that's cool like that. I think so. Speaker 2 Yeah. So I mean, is there any agency that actually teaching the SMB deployment? Uh, it wasn't it was never and everything. Speaker 1 It was on the advanced, but it was very quick. Speaker 4 On the advance or you can do it is actually a, um, a thing that you can take. I can't remember what it's called now. Speciality. Speaker 2 Speciality. I mean, it should be a necessity that everybody move on. And obviously we're talking about lift bags and brass and stuff. There is one thing I do want to mention about wreck diving and the. Political debate over whether we should lift brass or not. Many, many years ago, this I found a wreck. It's called. It's called the SS Hogarth, built in nineteen eighteen, in Aberdeen. It was a it was a steamer, just cargo and second class passengers that sailed once or twice a week between Aberdeen and London. And it was just during the war. It was just it was providing the provisions and everything that our nation needed. Now, this particular ship, the captain of that ship, Captain David Stephen, he was awarded the Lloyd's Silver Medal for bravery. Now, for a merchant seaman, that is one of the most prestigious awards you could possibly get. And when he got that to Ward for was that while another ship was under attack. He pulled his ship alongside and saved them all. Whilst it was under attack by U-boat. So he risked his life and that of his crew. But they all chose to do this. On the week that he received that award. His boat was hit with the loss of all life but one nineteen year old seaman. We found the wreck. I found the bell and it brought the bell back, along with a couple of other items that were found in order to identify the wreck, and it made a little bit of a splash and headlines at the time about this thing. And I got a phone call from a lady called Meredith Riley, and she was the curator of Aberdeen Maritime Museum. She said, we are putting on a display of some one hundred, one hundred and fifty years of shipping of Aberdeen. So obviously it's a maritime port and, you know, the maritime history is significant, and she would like some of the artifacts they would found. All reported the receiver of wreck an in order that she could talk about it. Because obviously this this ship and its crew were significant to the Aberdeen community. And she did a talk about Hogarth, and there was a number of people who sat in the room during that talk. And at the end of that talk, an old woman and a daughter walked to the front, and in her hand she had a bundle of cards, all wrapped in little ribbon, a load of cards, post cards. And she handed them out and said, my father was on that ship, and he wrote to me every week. Wow. Tell me about the class passengers on board. And it was a record of what life was like aboard that steamer and who the people were and what made them so damned brave to do this. And Mary explained that if you haven't found the wreck, if you hadn't provided all that, including the brass for the exhibition, which I shipped up there at my expense to make sure it could be there for people to see. So all of that stuff was put on display in the museum. If we hadn't done that, they wouldn't have had the talk. They wouldn't have met that person. She handed over all those cards so that now there is a social record, and it is the social history of who were they bringing them? Speaker 1 Real. Yeah. Speaker 2 And why did they do it? And why was it so important that social history would have been lost? Now you imagine if that that woman had passed away and there was postcards had never been handed on. They would have disappeared somehow, and none of us would know about Captain David, Stephen and the people that they saved. People would know about HMS Snaefell, the paddle steamer that used to be called Waverley that rescued so many troops from Dunkirk and from the Gallipoli landings. That is the social history which you bring back, which is important that people should know about. Yeah, that you don't get to hear about. So don't just take brass and put it in the garage. Yeah, that's just a waste. Yeah. For everything. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 So things like that end up in museums or on displays or like this, you know? Yeah. Speaker 1 And we've heard that from other wreck divers on the podcast where they've actually looked into it more and, you know, declared it. And then this whole amazing story is unfolded. Speaker 2 Yeah. Social history to which we would have lost if wreck divers didn't find and then tell people about it. Yeah, it's definitely it's a long may it continue that history gets lost. Mm. Speaker 1 Yeah a good story. And thank you very much for being on the Big Scoop podcast and telling us more about Narked at ninety. Speaker 2 Thank you very much.