Some people approach things systematically. They follow rules and go step by step. Thats what I had in mind when I opened the box containing my AERIS F.10 in the Blue Hole Villa – a five minute walk from Dean's Blue Hole, Long island, Bahamas. (FYI – If you've never been to Dean's Blue Hole, don't go. It's MINE!) I wanted to approach the F.10 with 'beginners mind' and on site where I could test it during Will Trubridge's Master Freediving Course. But there was a problem.
Having got maybe 3 hours sleep on each of the last two nights, and having spent the previous day riding in airplanes and sitting in airports, occupied with thoughts like 'I wonder how many of these people have swine flu.' and 'I wonder if paper germ masks will become a designer fashion accessory.' and 'Could those things possibly be real?!', my mind was in no shape to comprehend the cryptic chart in front of me.
What I needed was a story:
Dick and Jane were taking their dog Spot for a walk. Dick saw that Jane had a new watch. “What's that, Jane?” asked Dick, pointing at Jane's new watch. “Why Dick” replied Jane “This is my new AERIS F.10 freediving computer!”. Dick was very excited, and with a serious look on his face he asked Jane “Jeepers, Jane. I wonder how the heck you set the depth alarms on your new AERIS F.10?”. Jane stopped walking and said “Spot, stay!”. Then she looked at Dick and said “Well, Dick. I am ever so glad you asked! First you press these two buttons for more than 2 seconds.....”
Confounded by the chart, and humiliated by this failure to accommodate my already-dysfunctional-to-the-point-of-almost-mockery-even-without-two-days-of-sleep-deprivation mind, I strapped the F.10 on, trundled down to the hole, dove in and just started pushing buttons.
This did not provide the kind of instant gratification I was looking for, but it did develop the adversarial mindset I needed to start sorting out that chart.
Most good problem-solving, like creativity and pearls, begins with irritation.
The F.10:
I asked Martin Stepanek what his priorities were in working with AERIS on the F.10, and how he feels about the result:
“The original idea was driven by a simple
fact to create a watch for freedivers that will have what freedivers need
and don't have what they don't need, while covering all different needs of
different type of freediving - competitive, recreational, spearfishing etc.
It wasn't easy to accomplish. AERIS had to carefully mix and blend their
style, my visions, their engineer's and hardware capabilities and all that
needed to be affordable. The cocktail of these facts have produced F.10, the
best freediving watch so far.”
In physical format and function the F.10 resembles the AERIS Manta/Oceanic Geo. Martin's priorities as a freediver are evident in the arrangement, accessibility and design of the displays as well as in their content.
For example: I wondered why time-of-day and temp are not included in the main dive display, as they are on some other gauges. (they are just a button-push away) The reason became clear when some of the other divers commented that the F.10 is easier to read than the D4. It gets even easier to read when it switches from surface to dive mode and the display changes to a very uncluttered depth/time format. This makes it much quicker to read at a glance.
I really like the fact that the F.10 has three depth alarms along with an interval alarm. I set mine at 20, 30 and 40 meters. This was great psychologically because 30 and 40 seemed to come really fast compared to 20. The first time I heard that third alarm was pretty cool. I took the F.10 through more than a dozen personal bests – the last being 47.4 meters. Sure, thats only a little over a third of Martin's record; but at least, unlike some people I know, I didn't break my F.10.
I did 298 dives with the F.10, with zero problems. The alarms were always audible and I could read it at a glance in dark conditions at the bottom of my deepest dive without using the built-in light.
Everyone who tried the F.10 liked it. The biggest hits on first impression were:
Easy to read, simple displays
Three depth alarms (four really – if you count the depth interval alarm)
Simplified and well prioritized for Freediving
You can do the battery yourself (AERIS provides a special tool for this – though you could wing it if you lost it.)
Here is the list from AERIS of what the F.10 does.
• Freedive Mode Main displays Depth and Elapsed Dive Time with access to either a pre-set countdown timer or lap timer
• User defined surface recovery timer, repeating elapsed dive time alarm, repeating depth interval alarm and 3 max depth alarms - with flashing LED and auto-backlight illumination• 99 dive log with Max Depth, EDT, Surface Interval
• :01 step profile scroll – EDIT and Depth
• History Mode including total EDT and number of dives, Max depth ever with its EDT, Longest EDT ever with its Max Depth, Average Max Depth, EDT, and number of dives per day
• Digital watch functions including alternate time zone, chronograph, daily alarm, and countdown timer
• Optional PC Downloadable with 1 second sampling rate (The actual gauge sampling rate is higher – 1 second is just for the PC interface)
• User-Replaceable Battery
It does indeed do all of these things – and getting to the menus is straightforward and freediver-priority driven.
Because I used the F.10 during a very intensive training I was able to experience the need for some functions I would not ordinarily use – like the interval timer for doing line tables. The F.10 was definitely there for everything I needed.
These links take you to three nice youtube walk-throughs of the F.10's functions and displays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJBAKn4Nckk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J90UB63boLQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvzG6j2_G5I
Downsides:
• I wish the F.10 kept more than 100 dives in memory. It does remember your deepest, longest and how many overall, but you'll need to upload the logs to your pc if you want to keep a longer history.
• The AERIS PC interface software is work in progress and AERIS is very interested in input from the freediving community. So much so that I received two new betas incorporating suggestions I made within days!
• It would be nice if the activation depth were a little shallower – this would be a big help in pool work.
Conclusion:
The F.10 worked flawlessly for me under heavy use and when I needed functions beyond what I would normally use for recreational diving. It got everything I wanted from it and even in a learn-as-you-need-it type situation the learning curve was not bad at all.
I am in complete agreement with Martin's assessment that the F.10 is “the best freediving watch so far”.
What's more at $419 (msrp) it is priced for those of us suffering from expensive freediving-related disorders such as monofin addiction, Eliossub, OCMD (Obsessive-Compulsive Mask Disorder), SAD (Speargun Accumulation Disorder), Blue Hole etc., etc., etc.....
Technical support has been excellent. I've spoken with two reps at AERIS and they've told me they do their development in-house. Response time reflects this and has been very fast.
Hats off to AERIS for building the second-ever * dedicated gauge for freediving!
Here is a link to the Oceanic Europe contact page: http://www.oceanic.de/contact
Doug Krause – the USA AERIS rep - has started a thread on DeeperBlue.net dedicated to user input for the PC interface: link
And another for feedback on the F.10 unit: link
*As far as I know Eric Fattah's amazing F1 was the first.