Just because something appeared almost 45 years in the past, doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a lot of fun or even practical in today's world. Set the Wayback Machine to March 1964 Mr. Professor and let's look in again on the then latest issue of
Skin Diver Magazine.
There it is the Rebikoff Pegasus. A torpedo like DPV complete with airplane controls for steering, diving and ascending.
Page 1, these things were a blast to fly vertically towards the surface and burst free like a breaching whale, Polaris or something as shown in the photo. The Pegasus was too top shelf for the likes of us with the expensive battery pack. So we used a very similar device with the exception of a long power extension cord (100 yards+). The cord was used to tow a large, 220 V, 40 A diesel generator around in a 13.5 ft. Whaler. Seems awkward but it worked. You didn't want to take it out into too large a sea though. The guys found this out the hard way of Viecas, Puerto Rico when 6 to 8 ft. seas caused the craft to turn turtle and be pulled to the bottom. So, that is how you can sink a whaler, with a huge weight bolted into it. They were on a Navy job surveying reef conditions in the bombing range. So no worries, just send a Huey out and winch it up off the bottom and fly it to shore for cleaning.
Playing around with the device, it is easy to do. The Pegasus/Remora was designed as a survey vehicle with numerous custom designed UW arch lamps, cine cameras, photogrammetric cameras and the like. I can recall how thrilled we were to find a digital depth gage, an old Farallon, for our Remora to serve as an artificial horizon during photogrammetric surveys to preserve scale. It was the first digital depth gage we had heard of and a steal at $500. in 1976! We used these gadgets in the mid 1970's well after this SD article.
I see Jerry Greenberg shot these photos. Lots of us may have copies of his UW photo books of the Florida Keys. You know back in the day when they still had Elkhorn Coral? Times do change. I have some images of my own of the Remora in action along with some photogrammetric composite images. I'll have to find them and put them into a POD at some point in the future.
Noticed this Dacor ad and thought I would throw it in. How about those prices and nifty gear?
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