Posts by sharkey

Interesting a 50% let off. I'm a bit slow with schematics & I am really going to need to see one & pull it apart & put it back together several times myself before I fully understand this new "dream air" concept. The videos of it working are awesome, it would also be nice to see the speed & distance qualified in them. Either way, its an exciting invention & its great to see ( in a large part thanks to yourself ) these creative people investing so much brain power & energy in spearfishing. Hopefully its not just a 50 million dollar space pen, to replace a pencil.

Sure cams, but not eccentrics. Does the effort to load "let off" after the initial draw like a "compound projector" with this design? The benefit as I see it with a compound gun, is it will reverse the power stroke by starting the spear easy ( first gear) & then putting on the gas, instead of a typical gun which starts in 5th gear & slows & ends in first. With a compound speargun we should also be able to go down a spear diameter & still be able to tune for accuracy with the added gain in sectional density from the thinner spear.

Thanks Peter, that is the sort of thing I'm looking for. I take it no one is using eccentrics on a speargun yet?

Interesting, I had three identical guns with 6' x 3/8 shafts set up using the green, amber Riffe & the "American black rubber., I quickly lost the red Italian & blue Sth African stuff. The green rubber could be stretched much more easily than the others & it was made made shorter than the others, maybe this accounted for the better distance & speed from it. I dont understand why the recoil felt lighter as well, but it did? I have a few old mates who use similar set ups as the above & they have raised the same thing in conversation very recently, hence me posting on this old thread. Maybe old is the common denominator?:grin:

Cheers Bob

I can usually manage to get all my gear into two 23 kg bags. The gun bag usually carries 3 timber guns & at least 8 spears & I usually get one of two of the Riffe floats in there as well. The big bag has 3 fins, two masks, wetsuits, bungees, rig ropes, the other float & all the hardware & spares. Clothes & personal items dont take up very much weight. I always find that there is am extra kilo on the return, from moisture & wetsuits I guess, so I factor this in because the airlines are usually unforgiving. If I have to leave something, one of the bungees are the first to be left out, as they are heavy & not as important as everything else. On my last trip It was obvious that security had opened & inspected every single item down to the last screw (I suspect they were looking for powerheads?). Everything was still there when I arrived although arranged in a very different manner than I had packed. Also the airlines have started to crack down on bungees in carry on recently, apparently "they could be used to restrain people", & flashers too, make sure you check these in.

I recently went out & bought several meters each the five different 5/8 rubber brands I could find. I too found this green stuff the best for similar reasons as described above. Its twice the price of the next closest best two ( the riffe amber, & what we call "American black") but I will buy it again. The worst by far was the red stuff from Europe which was dissapointing as it is sold here by a good mate of mine & the next worse IMO was the Sef African blue stuff. The guns in the photo on the left are clones of three identical & the tri coloured is one of four clones. Yes, the rubbers were shortened slightly just after this photo was taken.

I'm more interested in hearing from those with experience in both compound bows & pulley guns or who understands the concept. Compound doesn't just infer two different parts in this context, it implys two different pulls. That is, that it starts off hard & when the cams roll over there is a let off anywhere from 35/65%, depending on the cams. Two levels of effort. This also means that a spear can be lighter/thinner as it starts more gently before accelerating. Is anyone who is claiming "compound" actually using eccentric cams?

I hear a bit of talk about "compound spear guns". Does this mean that people have made guns with true eccentric cams that "roll over" whilst the gun is being loaded, or have they missused the concept & just applied it to pully guns?

It's almost impossible for us to send a team to compete equally with some of the other countries when an event is held like this. Our teams are selected by divers who have qualified by gaining points in spearfishing competitions, not in apnea events. For Australia to have sent a compeditive team to this event we would have had to ignore fishing skills & ability & just select our deepest divers. Yes, we have deep divers but they dont win the spearfishing competitions down here, so wont get selected. Hopefully CMAS plan for future events based upon spearfishing skills not just apnea.

Thank you for adding me to the membership. I have been fortunate to have been involved with spearfishing since my boyhood. Now as a greybeard, I am still enjoying it, & even more so. I fished the Sydney comps quite seriously for almost twenty years from the mid 80's, & have enjoyed more trips out into the Coral Sea than I care to admit. Business, farm & family life did slow my diving down a wee bit, but in the last few years I have slowly made more time avaliable again for spearfishing & I'm glad I did. I am fishing comps again, been back out to the coral sea & have a couple more trips already booked for next year to get back out there. The greatest joy has been to once again feel a part of such a great searfishing culture & be part of the tribe.

Cheers! Bob