Posts by Diving gecko

    I just looked at the JBL website to view the description of the "Reaper".


    "Product Description


    The sear lever looks thick enough, I wonder why they used plastic for the other levers unless they were concerned about how the gun floated. A trigger can be slimmed down away from the load bearing areas if it is cast rather than cut from plate. Any photos of the levers outside of the mechanism cassette?


    You mean why did they make the trigger itself out of plastic? Not sure, but could possibly be to eliminate galling? On "that other forum" Majd has talked quite a lot about that happening in a lot of triggers he has taken apart. Also, if I got the timeline right, Sporasub's fix for an uneven trigger on the One was to change the trigger to a plastic one. Even the Abellan trigger which is supposed to be very nice has a plastic trigger.
    (Apologies if I misunderstood the question:))

    Great/professional videos. Did you do all the filming?


    Thanks Dan:-)
    Yup, did it all - except, some of the drone footage in the first one, I didn't do all of it, but did some. My friend wanted to fly too which was cool, instead I gave tips on the framing. That said, the drone footage we did was not super advanced, none of those crazy moves the guys who fly for a living can pull off now.


    I did all the rest of the shooting, though and 100% of Philippines one. But... actually crashed my drone off of a catamaran and into 100m of water on one of the first days of that trip so no drone footage on that trip.


    My background is as a documentary stills photographer, so I am used to being the only shooter and it works well for me. As does shooting as much as we can without setting scenes up. Also, for the dive trips we are just shooting our friends - regular people, so they can't act great anyways without it showing. Normally, someone comes up with an idea like 'yoga on the balcony' and then I just let them do it and shoot it like I would in documentary without interfering. We don't really have scripts and certainly not a storyboard, but rather a loose list of things we wanna do. But that list looks pretty much like it would if I wasn't there. It's a nice mix where the end result has a more real, genuine feel while we still get some elements into it that we want. And we come home feeling like though we did shoot and work, we were also on vacation.


    The only major problem was being in the water or near it a whole lot and only getting two hours of spearing in:(. More next time!:D

    You may never leave. Thailand is one of those places. You will meet so many folks that came there for "a few years" and now, it is 20 years later.
    I miss it a lot. I left when editorial photography kinda tanked in SE Asia and I moved on to China where the magazines still had a bit of an interest. Now, that is dying, too and I find myself shooting more and more corporate work.


    The 7-11s in Thailand are just amazing. There's pretty much nothing they don't have. You could live inside one, I think.
    Overall, living there is still amazingly affordable for how modern and developed it is.

    Oh, one thing - do bring all guns and bits and bobs you need for spearing. Unless things changed, there's not much there and import duties can be pretty horrendous and tedious. Luckily, it is a prime tourist destination so it's often not too difficult having friends bring stuff from US or Europe. No issues in airports with spearing gear either.
    But I guess you are used to thinking a bit ahead with your lifestyle:-)

    Will you have internetz in Thailand Hank? I would miss your stories :(


    Very likely (almost) as much as in Florida;-)
    Starbucks, too. Well, probably even better small coffee shops run by Thai hipsters on fixie bikes;-)

    Yup, they are very comparable I think.


    I have one spot, or rather a story of a spot. Someone who knows someone whose uncle may have heard something (while he took a piss) kinda thing. I'll PM you a locale when I dig it up:-)


    Phuket, on the Andaman side has some nice waters. I always thought there would be fish some hours out. There are on some of the outer lying islands a few hours out. After those, it is blue water all the way to Nicobar/Andaman which is supposed to be proper game fishing lands. But that's far away and a different country. But yeah, somewhere out there in the blue...;-)


    BTW, if your friend needs a promo video of his charter setup, I wouldn't mind joining in and trading favors;-).
    I shoot video and stills for a living, so here are two shameless self-promo links:


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP3qxalfT_M
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEYCJLSojk0


    Are you taking the family? Thailand is awesome for families. Thais are easy going, well-coming and generally just love kids. Weather is good, food awesome and I am sure you are better than most at adjusting to new cultures, so I think it will treat you nicely:-)

    Seriously, gonna move to Thailand?
    You'll miss the fish where you are now. Many places in Thailand are pretty over fished. If there are big pelagics there, I reckon you gotta do some miles but would love to be proved wrong. Pretty much everything I see there is medium sized compared to what I see you guys post here.


    That said, I did run run into an Aussie guy in Cyprus who said there were a few places with OK big fish left. But it was a bit hush hush. He was ex-army and had good connections with some Thai army guys who I guess had the lowdown on where this was...


    But doggies? Well, I used to live there, before I took of spearfishing and go back once in a while, so would love to hear what you find out.
    Maybe it is just that it doesn't have a great rep for good pelagics, so maybe people gave up exploring?

    Could be an eel. I had that happen to me with a coral trout. Shot it, fish went into a hole, I went after and was about to grab it when I see a fat, disgusting moray seemingly chomping away on it. I hate those things.
    I go back down to get my spear, if nothing else. And there is the coral trout - a bit chewed on but not too bad. No eel to be seen. Weird.


    Another spearo once send me a pic of a red snapper with a big bite of its belly taken out of it. The spearo had it hanging on his belt stringer, right on his ass, when an eel came out of a hole and took a bite. This was in Thailand so sharks aren't an issue but I am not gonna do belt stringer again after I saw that.

    I have done a bit more thinking and reading on this subject and perhaps Dan is actually doing it the right way.
    My argument for not putting a permanent bend in the spear was two-fold. I thought there was no need, I was thinking/hoping that if the metal was stiff initially, it would be less prone to bending, too. Also, I don't really shoot big spear-bending fish but I would like a shaft which would suppress spear whip the most and thus be more efficient.


    As John explains in the previous post, up until the point of permanent bending, you are measuring the elasticity (the shaft will return to its original shape) but here is the kicker: This is pretty much the same for the different kind of steels we use! They will all, for a given thickness and force, bend the same amount. Up until the point where the will stay bent - that point can be vastly different and is the Yield Point given by the Yield Strength.


    So, for my hope of finding a spear which will whip less (whipping is elasticity as the shaft will return to normal), it's a futile test - they will all whip the same, they will all bend the same amount but some of them can take a lot more bending before they stay bent (and this is what Dan was setting out to test).


    So, Dan - please do continue the testing.
    With the usual disclaimer that I am not a metallurgist nor an engineer, if my findings so far are correct my test actually made very little sense and the only thing we really need to talk about with shafts is the Yield Strength. Unless, there are some steels out there with higher modulus of elasticity as this would make it whip less.

    I like that it has a switch instead of a twist. Twisting a light on is a pain in the ass. I don't understand why so many (dare I say majority) of those lights are twist on/off. I'm going to need to snag one. Sorry for the derail.


    I agree fully. Slider or button, anything that works one-handed. Sliders do the most, the easiest and I am not surprised Dan identified that.
    But the big brands are slowly getting it as I see a few more like these in various catalogues. Took a while though:rolleyes1:

    I agree, the cudas I have eaten in Asia have been great eating - used to use them for ceviche before I found out how great rainbow runners are for that (funny how some people have such great fisheries, they use runners for bait...!)
    Not sure I noticed the smell so much, but the slime, man the slime... No wonder people think they are trashy, when covered in all that goo.

    Wow, Reaper, hardcore gun - it should go gun to gun with the Predathor;-).
    Joke aside, in reg. to the Reaper, I guess it must be cutting edge to buck the reverse mech trend and combined with those horrendous wishbones and band ties, they are def pushing for the lowest possible efficient band stretch. They messed up on the muzzle, though - those bands look nicely stacked and way too forward;-)


    I agree with Don Paul, first thing I thought of was how nice a base that handle is for filling it with some putty:-)


    "Nice" to see a good old American company getting properly "inspired" for a change...:-)
    Happy Holidays from Shanghai:reddevil:

    Thanks Peter, one of the guns my sons collection needs some day.


    Cheers, Don


    If it is to be used (and it is a great gun - I think I remember you having used one before) then go for a V2 version, as the leaking power regulator rod that Pete mentions is not an issue on those. Luckily, it seems like the very vast majority of Mirages out there are V2s.


    PM me if you start looking for a gun in anger, I have a contact I can share that tends to come across them once in a while:-)

    Marco what happens when the neoprene sleeve crushes if you dive to 30 meters as a wet suit does?


    Cheers, Don


    You know the answer, Don;-)
    Obviously, the gun starts to freeze as the wetsuit looses thickeess!
    And possibly, the gun slightly becomes heavier. And I guess after a few seasons the sleeve has lost some of its volume;-).


    In general, I do find that shorter pneumatics can be hard to balance - some of them are a tad heavy but normally the longer ones are OK. Basically, they have the same parts in them, same heavy parts like bulkhead, nose cone and handle but the longer ones gain some buoyancy that the shorter ones don't as the added material to make a longer gun is just outer reservoir and inner shooting barrel and a section of that is positive in itself. (Hope I made sense.)


    But as mentioned elsewhere, the Salvi plastic parts seem denser and heavier, but a dry muzzle gains buoyancy, too as the barrel wont flood - so, I was kinda thinking Marco's long guns should balance nicely as is.


    Real shame about the reel, Marco:(:(. That's uncool and could loose you a gun, I reckon. Hope you sort it out and I will take a good look at mine, too. Since I might end up gifting my new Salvi 85 to a friend of mine, a newcomer to spearing, I might drop the reel and make her a floatline and lifeguard can setup instead.

    It's not a spring. I am not exactly sure how it works but I think its a certain material that might change voltage drop or resistance as it gets strained. So, it is kind or a S or Z shaped piece of metal(?) inside with the top leg being the top eye of the scale and the bottom being where the load attaches. And then you run a current through it and a micro processor with an algorithm puts out a value. At least that's what I think.
    All this tech/chips/sensors have become so cheap and accessible.


    E.g. look at the DJI drone. 1000 bucks for something that is much more advanced than 100.000 USD military UAVs from just 5-10 years back. I know MIL spec is a different ball game, but tech is becoming way cheaper.


    In reg. to the ratchet strap, I blatantly stole that idea from some dude on youtube testing fishing lines:-)

    Ha! I have an extra yellow cargo strap, now I know what I'm going to do with it :thumbsup5:


    [...].


    Super easy build:-)
    This stuff is so cheap in China, I don't mind building stuff on a spur of the moment thing. I got a 1.5m alu rectangular profile, the scale, some bolts and the cargo strap (thanks for the proper name) and made it in an hour.
    I've since taken a tape measurer and added to the alu profile in case I need to see elongation, too.


    Here are few more snaps: