First Dive with the MDE Manifold

I went diving this weekend with Chris to do some underwater photography stuff and as I was mentoring I wasn't doing much shooting so I decided to have a play with the manifold and to be honest I wasn't that impressed with the valves.

To put it in perspective I have dived with DIRZONE or AGIR manifolds on all of the twinsets I have used and whilst they do get a little stiff if they haven't been cleaned/serviced for a while, once they have been cleaned they are really slick even when filled to 230 bar.

The fills I had were 220 bar and I did a series of shutdowns at the start of the dive and to be honest, they were worse than a clean set of Scubatec (wearing whatever badge they wear on the outside) valves. They weren;t stiff and I could move them pretty easily, but they weren't as slick as a clean set.

To counter this, I can't say I have dived with an old offset MDE manifold so I have nothing to compare it with, they might be the same. As the gas was used up (I didn't use more than 110bar and didn't want to drain the 32% for the sake of it), I can't say what they were like when empty (to see if they were consistently average) but I will be diving them again on the 8th March to see what they are like when a little more empty :D

We are also trying to get hold of a Halcyon manifold to take pictures and do a side-by-side usage comparison, so watch this space.