They are great! I'm not a competitor, and I don't
do much high-altitude flying, but I can report this:
While at altitude it started beeping at me. I checked
the air lines and the battery and all was ok. Turned
out that, when I twisted around to retrieve a water
bottle, I had dislocated the cannula. It slipped sideways
just enough that the right outlet had slipped over
to my left nostril and the one for the left nostril
was hanging in the breeze. I didn't know this. Had
it not beeped for me I might have flown on into oblivion
because I was not getting any oxygen.


At 00:30 16 March 2005, Bob Korves wrote:
A pilot (a top national competitor) told me that he
uses the EDS system
because 'I turn on my oxygen at the beginning of the
flight and don't think
about it again'.

Now that really has merit, not to need to be checking
a flow meter and
fiddling with the needle valve (or forgetting to).

That said, I am still using the Nelson system, mostly
because I can't seem
to talk myself into purchasing something that looks
like a $5 transistor
radio for, what, $800+? It even has the transistor
radio 9v battery!
Although I have heard nothing but good reports about
the EDS, it still looks
cheap to me...
-Bob Korves

'Bill Daniels' wrote in message
...

'David R.' wrote in message
...
Yep, we had this discussion just the other day and
I was starting to
think
that I was going to change from my constant flow
system to the EDS.

This thread has caused me to decide to keep my current
system.

Oxygen is relatively cheap at my field, my bottle
is good sized and the
whole battery issue is a non-starter.

Thanks to all for all of your infomation, you saved
me several hundred
dollars.

dave r.

I have the same situation. O2 is cheap but refills
take time and I have
to
do it for each flight. My old system used a demand
mask that was
uncomfortable and it depleted the 22 Cu. Ft. bottle
in about 4 hours.
After
a season, that got old.

The EDS system is simplicity in action. Just put
the cannulla on with the
control unit set to start O2 flow at 10k feet and
go fly. The O2 supply
will last 34 hours at 18K feet which means that a
refill maybe twice a
season. Convenience wise, there's no comparison.

There's also good data that says the pulse demand
will get the O2 deeper
into the lungs for better blood O2 saturation. The
EDS D1 system is
expensive but it's a damn good system for gliders.

Bill Daniels