Tank Scooter Management Device
| I am not sure who came up with the idea of
putting together a tank/scooter management device, but my guess
would be John Martin and Jim Campos. It was Terry Otsby
who made their design a reality by fabricating the first
proto-type. (See Pictures Below) The need
for such a device was realized after a couple of scooters floated away during
our pre-dive safety checks. We also found we were getting a lot of
sand in our first and second stage regulators on our stage
bottles as they
rested on the lake bottom before be attached to our
harness.
Terry and I headed out Sunday morning and met up at Burger King in Sparta. After a quick breakfast we headed out to Lake Wazee. It was beautiful day, the temperature was in the upper 50's and to our surprise there was no one else at the dive site. While I was working my scooter weighting I noticed a gleam of metal in about 4' of water. To my surprise it was my dive knife that I had lost a couple of weeks ago. What a stroke of luck! Terry and I then decided to throw the TSMD into the water and worry about putting it deeper in the sand after we returned. So we dropped it right by the rocks in which JMM had setup his first TSMD. (Rocks with rope around them) I hooked my scooter and three stages up to the TSMD and Terry hooked another stage to it. It worked really great keeping all our gear out of the sand. We then did a nice leisurely dive to 100' for thirty minutes. I cannot believe how rotten the viz is even at 100'. During our dive I also found a pretty nice lift bag. I have posted on WISCUBA and MNSCUBA to see if anyone can identify it. After the dive we again attached our scooter and tanks to the TSDM. After some deep discussion we decided that it would be a effort in futility to try and bury the TSMD into the sand, and making it lower would only put our second stages back in sand. So, we set it right by the JMM rocks in about 3.5' of water. Terry and I don't think anyone is really going to notice it since it sits more towards shore and not in the main dive area. Since our main photographer Roger Southwick wasn't along to document the resting place of the TSMD, we put my camera in a plastic bag and shot the photo in the upper right hand corner. I would really like to thank Terry for all the metal fabrication that he has done, not only on the TSMD, but also for the other work he has performed for our diving group. I believe the plan is to install a TSMD at all of our main diving areas and after using this one, it is a great idea!
Joe-
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