Posted by Dan Wright
(1963Dan) on 4/14/2008, 11:26 pm, in reply to "New You Tube video of soviet scooter renovation"
208.120.221.30
On Saturday the 12th of April, I took the Protei-5 to Dutch Springs for the quarry testing. Doud Card came and brought his Dacor scooter for some testing of his DPV. Due to not seating the port hatch down tight enough, once we placed it in the quarry it was leaking from the port hatch. After opening the hatch and draining out the fresh water and toweling it out, I cranked down on the bolt and away we went. Results: The Protei was fast and had high torque, somewhat faster than the Dacor scooter, but Doug and I soon seperated and it was tough to judge the speed. The prop spins counter-clockwise, so it does tend to drift to port. After a short time I seemed to adjust for this naturally. What was not expected was after a steep dive it was difficult to level off with style. This is due to two major reasons: One is the drysuit legs and feet filling with air and the weight of the batteries and my steel double tanks near the front end. If you have seen the pool test video, we were in thin wetsuits and single tanks. Now at the quarry, we are heavily insulated, drysuits and double 95's.......quite a change. I will get drysuit gaiters for the calves to help prevent excess air from collecting, but the steep dives will take practice. Turning left and right is no problem. I enjoyed my time riding around, kind of got a kick out of some of the other divers reactions as I raced by while they were doing classes. During the two dives lasting a combined one hour, my batteries went from 13.2 volts to 12.0.
I did not notice any loss of power, if I get a chance, I'd like to run it about 3 hours to see how it holds up.
Good day of testing, I feel it is ready for open ocean tests. I may return in two weeks for another round of quarry testing if we get blown out at Belmar.
-Dan
p.s. sorry we didn't get any pics, as Doug and I had our hands full.
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