Gotham Divers

Nice first day of the Dive season :)

Teaching is back at Gotham Divers! Class of 5 tonight.

New Sonar Rig - Tow Fish & 24" Depressor The final components of the new system were recently completed, so this is probably our last engineering-related post f...or a while First, a very special thank you to two project partners: DeepVision, for supplying the transducers & electronics. Depth-rated to 300m / 1,000', the new transducers are built differently than our prior sonar, and are used in DeepVision's soon to be officially launched BigEye system. We selected DeepVision in 2018 for the unmatched value (high quality at a reasonable cost) of their products and they have continued to impress us since then with their creativity, flexibility and overall ease of working together. B&B Precision Components, for CNC machining the nose and tail cones for the new tow fish. B&B went out of their way to add nice touches that we hadn't originally considered, such as chamfered edges. It's hard to describe how cool it is to go from a basic idea and some parabola formulas in a spreadsheet to holding an expertly-machined component in your hand that's literally better than the one you had dreamed of. You might recall from our prior post on system design (link below) that we are using a "two-part" towed system in order to reduce image distortion resulting from waves/swell. There are three basic requirements for any sonar tow fish used in such a system: 1) Neutral buoyancy, because the tow fish is towed horizontally from its nose, as opposed to being suspended vertically. 2) Balanced, so that it will tend to remain horizontal in the water, as opposed to tilting up or down. 3) Ballasted, so that it will be able to resist any torsion (twisting) forces from the tow cable, remaining upright instead. The other update is a new, smaller depressor, and modular weights for both it and the larger depressor previously built (link to prior post below). The smaller depressor is easier to manage on the boat and is best suited to shallower tow depths (down to ~200'). The designs of the two are similar but some fabrication learnings from the first (larger) one were incorporated in the second. The rest of the story is told through captions to the attached photos. Enjoy! -------------------- Prior posts: Heave Compensator & A-Frame Design (3/25/21): https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=566407241424533&id=109413857123876 Cable & Winch Design (3/8/21): https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=554371025961488&id=109413857123876 System Design Overview (3/2/21): https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=549943266404264&id=109413857123876 30" Depressor Design/Construction (11/4/20): https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=441946123870646&id=109413857123876

Today marks the 135th anniversary of the sinking of the 501'-long Cunard passenger liner SS Oregon. Built in Scotland in 1883, SS Oregon was the fastest transat...lantic liner of her day, and her dynamo (generator) was once repaired by Nikola Tesla as his first job assignment from Thomas Edison the day after he arrived in America. At approximately 4:30am on March 14, 1886, while steaming towards New York City off Fire Island, NY, SS Oregon collided with a schooner in the dark. Eight hours later she slipped beneath the waves with no loss of life. While the identity of the schooner remains a mystery to this day, it is widely believed to have been the Charles H. Morse, which might be one of two unidentified shipwrecks in our scan collection: "John Phillips" or "Marsha" (see below for link to free Google Maps shipwreck chart). Today the SS Oregon shipwreck site is arguably Long Island's most popular dive destination, offering abundant structure, above-average visibility, lots of sea life and the potential for finding historical artifacts. By popular request and for a limited time only, today we are pleased to offer high-resolution prints of our side scan sonar imagery of the SS Oregon shipwreck juxtaposed with either a historical photo of the ship, or deck plans. The historical photo is the highest-resolution version available (11 megapixels; much better than the sample included in this post) and was provided courtesy of the State Library of South Australia. The sonar imagery is also of a very high resolution, revealing fine detail such as individual beams and the spokes of the iconic steering quadrant. $125 gets a 16x20 print delivered to your door. Payment can be sent via PayPal to [email protected]. Be sure to include the following information with your payment in PayPal's "Add a note" field: 1) Indicate choice of image: shipwreck sonar scan plus either A) vintage photo or B) deck plan 2) Shipping address Proceeds will be used to fund the expansion of our free public collection of shipwreck sonar images, which is available at the link below. Prints will not include the copyright watermark featured in our free public images and may include additional enhancements as well. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit For video of what it's like to dive the SS Oregon today, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFH_viM3Hlw For additional historical information about SS Oregon, we recommend Gary Gentile's excellent book Shipwrecks of New York, and NJScuba.net: https://www.ggentile.com/book-store/p/shipwrecks-of-new-york https://njscuba.net//new-yo/long-island-west-chart/oregon/

Spots still available for this coming weekend. Come on folks let's fill em up!

Independence II has a trip on Tuesday Sept.29th Depth will be 120 ft.or less.. Destination will be determined on that morning.. Contact Captain Dan..732-232-7878

Charter update - Correction! 9/13 is now to the Resor 9/19 Tolten has 2 spots left

Charter update and a destination change. 9/13 is now to the Resor

Awesome Monday on the Indy II on the wreck of Stolt. You could see the wreck from the surface!!

A few more from the Immaculata.

Another awesome day with the gang on the Independance II to the wreck of the Immaculata.

Charter update and one change. 8/22 is now to Gulf Trade.

Gotham Divers had yet another awesome day aboard the Independance II to the wreck of the Tolten.

Added 8 wreck sites (technically, 9 wrecks) to the chart: LILLIAN, SS MOHAWK (Clyde Liner), RC MOHAWK, FRANCIS WRIGHT (aka "Emerald", "Hibiscus"), PINTA, ADONIS & RUSLAND, "WRECK 270" and "BARGE 73": https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer

Charter update and correction. The Virginia trip on 8/30 previously listed as full is open.

Charter update. Spots are filling fast!