Space and Shallow Water Dive Helmet

Beat in the Bidding

Won the War

This starts 44 years ago with a field trip my dad took me on in the the 50's. It was the spring when I was 15 going on 16. I had been scuba diving for 6 years and at the time was one of the only civilian scuba divers in Virginia Beach. Mom and Dad had created a water baby and JT had made me into a diver. Now I was going to see a real hard hat diving operation. Turns out that Crofton of the Crofton and Morrison, a dive firm in the Tidewater harbors, was a relative by marriage. This was going to be neat. I was facinated by anything that had to do with diving (that is still true). It got even better because I got a summer job with them. I was a big boy even then and had a real grasp of diving. I just did not have a clue what I was getting into.

Romantized by movies, hard hat diving is really the process of putting a manual laborer in a hostile environment. The damned suits stank, I could not see out of the helmet in the harbor water, the air coming in is noisy, and I worked by feel. I sank down from the silty water to the watery silt. There was hardly a real bottom, it just got denser. However the pay was better than flipping a hamburger or making donuts for Dad that summer. Would I do it again or even consider that line of work....no way. I sure did not try for a job diving the next summer. I went for the beach and the girls. Give me warm tropical clear water anyday.



Fast forward to some pictures Dr Bob (the SOB who gets me into so much trouble sent me of him hard hat diving in a tank in Sudden I mean Southern California.) Then, Reverend Brian, a member of the rebreather list and I were chatting about diving stuff when he mentioned his shallow water diving helmets the kids play with in the pool.

I felt some old urges coming back. Damn those attempts to rekindle my youth. I was directed to E-bay, one of my playgrounds...the worlds largest flea market and garage sale. There it was a shallow water diving helmet that looked like a space helmet. The amazing thing is that it was designed as a space helmet. It was designed to test the NASA pressure suits. If you look at the current space helmet design, you can see this thing as a prototype. I had to have it. It had the lure of the Sirens who called Greek sailors to their deaths. It was going to be mine...mine..mine I say...my precious. ..but I digress.

The bidding was at 600 dollars so I bid 800 to make sure that I had a cushion. You probably know how Ebay bidding is so I will not give you a lesson. My bid sat as the high bidder until about 10 minutes before the end when I was over bid. Who was the sniping bastard, who could be after my precious. I bid 1000 to run the bottom sucking scoundrel off. He over bid me again. I bid 1200 to show him a lesson. I knew he would overbid me that time so it was just in spite. Damned if he did not go for it. Oh well, Brian, seen here on the right in one of his shallow water helmets had offered me an aqua bell for $75 and it would serve the purpose.

The next day I got an e-mail from a delightful gentleman near Tampa, Mr Gary L. Harris. He said that he had noticed that I was a serious bidder. I told him what I had done and why. I ended up calling him up. He laughed telling me that he had made that helmet and could make me one. How much, I asked and he said $800 dollars plus shipping. I agreed. We chatted about our experiences common history and the fact that Brian had one of his shallow water helmets (a fact I already knew). His products are shown on the left. I was not in a rush but in a few short weeks it arrived the day before I headed to San Diego on a conference and more importantly, a day of watching a rough muddy ocean with Dr. Bob.



After I got back, I went to work. I got a 50 foot air hose, some line, and found a perfect little compressor in my toy box. It was an oilless Thomas that I had to buy in St Louis during a smoke stack testing job several years ago and only had 6 hours on it. (These are available from WW Grainger) It delivers over three cubic feet per minute at 20 psi gauge...more than enough to handle a shallow water pool. I rigged the 50 foot airhose with a rope for a strain relief, teflon taped the fittings, and tightened things up. Off to the pool.






The pool session was two fold. My daughter was practicing with her new DUI drysuit. She was learning flotation and sinking skills. I was going to play with the space helmet become the space traveler in training and perhaps recapture a bit of my far gone youth.

In addition to Janie, I had Harry Sudduth, one of my trainers who just did not want to be in the office that afternoon. I bribed him with a dish of BBQ beef ribs for lunch. Harry was going to be my tender. He is great with mechanical things as are all my guys. This was going to be fun. When we arrived at Gypsy Divers, they wanted to see what I had to play with this time. They have seen me take a bunch of weird stuff in their pool. This time when they saw the toy, they ran for their bathing suits to join in the play. Harry added the back weight to the helmet while I brought in my dry suit.

Harry took no time in getting the pump started and I lowered the helmet into the deep end of the pool. Bubbles came up like a steam vent from an underwater volcano. What fun. Dave, the owner of Gypsy Divers jumped into the water first. I told him that he could try it first...and he did not give me a chance to change my mind. I was still on the side of the pool in a bathing suit and fish shirt.

Dave came up without the helmet. He said his head didn't fit. Everyone started giving him a hard time about having issues. He tried again, to no avail. I jumped in and grabbed a mask, went to the bottom and slipped my head in. Breathing was fine but the mask was fogged, I could not get it off inside the helmet and I could not see. I slipped the helmet off dropped the mask and put my head back in. Everything was great. Noisy bubbles were everywhere. It was just like the old days except that I could see.

After a couple of pictures I gave it back to Dave and he put it on. As you can see, his smile goes from ear to ear. He was having a ball. I was not sure that I would ever get the helmet back.

After a little bit, Laura tried it on and stalked around on the bottom of the pool. She also had a ball. What a hoot. We got my value out that afternoon. There were a few leaks at the gasket of the dome but there was so much air coming in that the water just flowed out the bottom. I changed into my drysuit for the planned pictures that you saw as the header of this page. Dave freedove and shot those pictures. Wednesday evening I e-mailed a couple of shots to Dave and Laura, Thursday I sent them a CD of all the shots that arrived today (Friday). That is amazing because the Raleigh mail is sorted somewhere in North Dakota.



Tonight Dave called me and discussed making the decorative Mark 5 in the shop into a shallow water helmet. He is hooked.