Diver Dave's IDA-72 Teardown

The Russian IDA-72 is a rather unique Semi-Closed Circuit rebreather designed to be fed by an umbilical for surface-supplied or saturation diving using Heliox. It has (2) 2-liter internal cylinders that were originally designed to be used as bailout cylinders in case the umbilical supply was lost, a very large scrubber capacity, and an extremely interesting belt-worn valve block that allows the diver to flush the loop and also to split the loop and cause the rig to become a demand-only system. This last feature is totally unique as far as I can determine, and is a very interesting design feature. This feature alone makes the IDA-72 worthy of close study.

What can we conclude about this rebreather? First, it is an extremely well designed and executed system for performing saturation or deep surface-supplied tethered diving. There is nothing else in the world that does even close to what this rig was designed to do, and Western users of saturation diving techniques could learn a lot from this piece of equipment. It most closely resembles a Draeger FGG-III, but is more advanced in several ways. For sport diving it would need to be modified, but there are a few different ways to go about it. The first way would be to simply connect side-mounts of desired gas to the rig via the umbilical feed connection, and to switch gas supplies as needed for travel, bottom, and deco gas. This could be done with a switching manifold, and would become, in essence, a poor-mans Halcyon with some on-board bailout. The second approach would be to remove the entire pneumatics system, re-valve the two cylinders with DIN valves, and then install an electronics package, turning it into a CCR. A little re-plumbing would allow the loop-flush and demand modes to be used from internal gas, and the existing umbilical connection would provide a path for use of offboard diluent. Both systems would work. I'm studying the rig now, and can promise that you'll be seeing it again, as it emerges from the Diveshop of Horrors: Similar, but strangely different.

Dave Sutton

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