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| Jan Willem Bech is the owner of the
'The Rebreather Website' and will exhibit at EuroTek.2010
with his collection of old rebreathers. Jan from the netherlands
will be on hand to pass on rebreather information to people
visiting his stand about rebreathers in general and will be
showing around 25 historic rebreathers including rare examples
such as the French DC55 and the Canadian SIVA as well as his
Pirelli’s which he tells us are worth a fortune……
Jans website was one of the earliest dedicated CCR sites to
spring up on the internet visit his site here >> http://www.therebreathersite.nl |
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Jan Willem Bech started his addiction to diving
in 1989 after an introduction dive in Dutch waters and he soon
became an addict. His wife Caroline also did the necessary training
and they went on to dive in more than 15 different countries
worldwide.
After he became an instructor he still wanted more from his
diving so in 1999 he started to dive with rebreathers and realized
there was a whole new exiting diving world out there to be explored.
It was the combination of the technique, adventure and training
that triggered his particular interest.
As the years passed by, Jan spent more and more time on technical
training with his instructor Rob Postma and then especially
with the CCR trimix training in France with Inspiration inventor
Dave Thompson. |
Being a full trimix CCR diver it
was possible to undertake some very exiting diving projects,
and one after the other soon followed! To be able to share his
new experiences and passion he decided to use the Internet and
created www.therebreathersite.nl.
In those days there was not a lot to be found on the web about
rebreathers except on the Internet sites of Dave Sutton, NW
design and Kerry McKenzie. |
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| After he started to document the Inspiration rebreather a
considerably large Internet site evolved rather rapidly and
before long the site attracted international attention.Inspired
by all the great new contacts the next step to further develop
the Internet site was easily taken. After trying to bring structure
in all the information about rebreathers, Jan soon discovered
that there were a lot of ways it could be done. |
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Choices had to be made so he decided to concentrate
on the most simple form of rebreathers, the pure oxygen ones
first. Jan thought that having documented about 10 to 20 different
models on my Internet site would be it.However, after 5 years,
even he is still surprised that, after completing an almost
daily job of updating information, you can now find the description
and photographs of 300 (!) oxygen rebreather models on the site. |
| For this accomplishment his Internet site was rewarded as
‘Masterpiece’ by his dive organization, the NOB
(Dutch Underwater Federation), member of CMAS and sister organization
of the BSAC.Therebreatersite.nl also became part of the necessary
prerequisite requirements to become a 3* CMAS instructor, so
his work was rewarded again. |
A next logical step was to add a
database for the Semi-closed and Closed-circuit rebreathers.
However he decided to use another method for collecting all
the information.Parallel on the website he developed several
pages with several knowledge areas.
By now the SCR and CCR rebreather, but also the MCCR, areas
are now constantly updated. A historical section is also added
but the most recent pages focus on atmospheric dive suits. |
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By also keeping Therebreathersite.nl up to date
with all kind of basic main diving knowledge it’s used
daily as a source for information by training agencies and research
workers. By publishing this treasure of information Jan has
acquired a lot of friends all over the world!
Left: Jan Willem Bech (left)
diving in France |
Dave Thompson with an early
Inspiration CCR |
Some of them visited him at his home to share
some very interesting conversations into the long hours of the
night. Jan agrees that it looks like all rebreather divers are
obsessed by their hobby and its not going away!
On his computer he still has a lot of documents which are ready
for future development and publication. Because of all the contacts
worldwide a lot of rebreathers are presented to him. Today Jan
has a nice collection of old models which to his utmost pleasure
he will present to you at the Eurotek.2010 diveshow; Jan considers
this a great honor to be present at the Eurotek.2010 conference
just as he did in 2008! And, he says, this is a great opportunity
to meet all his correspondence friends from United Kingdom and
surrounding European countries |
Jan hopes to see you at his stand at EuroTek
http://www.therebreathersite.nl
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