Vintage Double Hose

You can download the entire archive. Some of us have done so, JIC.

That’s true. We did that on purpose because Bryan wanted every diver to be able to keep the data he or she wanted.

How much does the hosting service cost? Maybe we can just pay that and keep things running?

It's the simplest solution and they always say the simplest solution is usually the right one.

Hostgator advertises hosting service as low as $2.75 per month... I'd be glad to pay for the first whole YEAR if it can be had for prices like that.

I doubt you are going to find a site that will host the forum, and store all of the archives for a price like that. For long...

Don't forget the Photobucket debacle.

I would guess the entire website is about 250 dollars or so a month to host. It would be less without PayPal, ECWID, things like that. The important thing to note as a layperson is this isn't "a web site" in the sense that it is a unitary object. I mean it is to you guys, but it's not to IT people. It's many things. It's hosting, which we pay for. It's a Wordpress application that serves the front page and the style and stuff. It's ECWID which is the cart and the store. It's PayPal for payments. It's PHPBB for the forum. It's a file sharing service. It's many, many things. It just all happens to look like one thing. Kind of like how a person who doesn't know cars thinks a car is a unitary thing, when really a car is an umbrella term for a set of systems. It's a transmission, an engine, a controller area network, an interior, HVAC, etc.

Also it's not ours. It's Bryan Pennington's which makes it his family's until they decide what to do with it. It's not mine to move around or control because I don't own it. It's not my property.

To be fair, I'm also not super read in on what is going on with VDH. I keep it running, but as far as what is going to be done with it, nobody really talks to me about that. If this were a chess board I'd be like a knight. I'm a specialty piece, but I'm not a king, or a queen, or even a rook. So I'm fairly far down the pecking order from being in the know.

My main goal in this thread is to come up with the preferred option in the event the Pennington family elicits feedback from the people who peruse the forum, so I can have a consensus answer to give someone. It appears that most people would like to keep VDH here. That wouldn't be too terribly hard to do if we retooled it and stripped out the store and the payment system and really just made it a front page with a forum and filesharing and such.

Sorry to be long winded but sometimes things are as simple as they can be.

Shit! I just found out. Is nobody talking about continuing to operate the business as a whole? Not just the board.

Ive seen this coming for a couple years. I placed a large order to stock up on things I've stocked up on. Bryan emailed me from the hospital saying he would get my order out in the next week, then he was gone. I hope the money was able to help the family and it's not just sitting in an inaccessible account somewhere.

Ron and I have a younger friend that was really looking into dh after using mine, but was worried about parts availability. Another friend didn't like having to think about the regulator. He wanted to put it in his mouth and forget about it. I only see dh surviving if we can get another outfit to produce the Kraken and parts, like liesurpro or something, and sell it in stores and online. I haven't had a single good conversation about dh where I wasn't asked if I can still get parts. The forum should stay active on some platform we can all contribute to for the newer crowd. This forum setup is not attractive to younger people to use unles they also use automotive forums for diy fixing, which are a similar format. I love this forum. I asked Ron a while back if I could somehow save it. But people are used to getting on fb and not actually searching for an answer. The people on this forum actually remember how to talk and diagnose. The younger croud is going to want to post picture after picture instantly without resizing. Imagine having to resize the picture you just took of your Latte at McDonald's to post online. I understand that would mean considerable more storage requirements. If we can keep the kraken on the market and make it easier to get, I think it will drive interest in the older regs, especially since some of the parts are still interchangeable. Modern dive shops are totally NOT interested in looking at a kraken part and opening a screen to see what will work. Luis has a good list of what will work if I ever remember to print it out. and shops are not going to sell you the part directly, and they are not going to work on something they can't look onling and order from the distributor. They won't work on it anyway because they think it still uses a horse shoe lever and won't listen about modern lp seat holders. I think this pretty much means selling the Kraken idea to online stores and convince them it will sell and hope the don't change the design. I think dh diving is going to hinge on the Kraken since it's not "old". Im out of time and my wife is looking at me, I'll check my grammar later.

The old DAAM is the modern day Delorian. Ive only ever seen one Delorian actually on the road and driving in my 45 year old life, yet I would buy one of those too if I could. I don't like the idea of franchising the Kraken either, but I really think that's what will keep us out of a museum display case.

I also had a fairly large order in that didn't get fulfilled, as well. Not a big deal. I hope any $$ I lost will help the family.

You never know what will happen, but it's unlikely anyone will step up to make Krakens and Brian's DH parts in the future. As far as other sources, Vintagescubasupply is pretty much gone, so our last hope is Rob at this point, IMO.

Chris, you make some solid points. As far as parts go, if you can get the oring sizes etc for the regs you want to service yourself I've found silentexplorers (Gib & Ron) to not only be very helpful, but their pricing for orings and other parts like LP & HP seats, diaphragms etc to be great. They have OEM Aqualung parts and they will sell to you. On their website they list stuff by the Aqualung part numbers so it's easy to do a search if you have older stuff and know the part numbers. In the spirit of DIY it would be nice to have a "service manual" with o-ring sizes etc for the Argonaut available to those who own one. And as a side note, one of my neighbors has a Delorean... and another has a Lambo, both are garage queens. But the real blue ribbon winner is the 64 Stingray convertible in showroom condition, original silver paint job too! The guy bought it on BAT and he got a steal of a deal.