Dir, utd, wtf?

[rjack321]

I've never been able to find AG's final response to George. The link that's supposed to have AG's response (post #13 in the finsonline thread I referenced above) is broken. It feels like I saw most of the movie but never go to see the conclusion. Does anybody know where AG's final response would be?

That its all about money & big egos? Seriously, years later now I don't exactly recall Andrew's goodbye to GUE, but that's what was in the 5thD-X forum link. If you are looking for a "rebuttal to George" you won't find it there even if you could find it cached someplace.

BTW PfcAJ, AG left NAUI because Peter DH and the other NAUI course directors wouldn't adopt the most basic of DIR tenents. Things like minimizing O2 exposure and decent He %ages. He tried to create a consortium of instructors with the Gold star thing which all of the other existing agencies prompted pounced on as breaching their standards. To much is made of UTD's "for profit" status IMO. Most of the "non-profit" agencies are paying their office staff etc too.

 

[PfcAJ]

Ill be happy to find the posts for you tomorrow. I'm using my phone because I'm waiting for a taxi in in thailand, then taking an overnight bus (ugh, budget travel). More or less, my thoughts mirror Jarrods post regarding GUE's new min deco tables. It was recent and probably easy to find. Bottom stage discussion can be found on the divematrix forum.

Cheers!

 

[ucfdiver]

Ill be happy to find the posts for you tomorrow. I'm using my phone because I'm waiting for a taxi in in thailand, then taking an overnight bus (ugh, budget travel). More or less, my thoughts mirror Jarrods post regarding GUE's new min deco tables. It was recent and probably easy to find. Bottom stage discussion can be found on the divematrix forum.

Cheers!

Here ya go AJ (the bottom stages thread)
Question on UTD's stance on Deco and Stage bottle marking

 

[lamont]

For the sake of being argumentative I could say that GUE, in spite of being nominally a non-profit organization has ties that are way too close to Halcyon, a for profit entity. I could further say that these ties can and have created conflicts of interest.

Who cares if Halcyon and GUE actually were tied at the hip?

If the training works and the gear works, I'm perfectly happy if JJ profits.

The only conspiracy is that its a great way to dive, and most of the Halcyon gear is high quality. Haters just like to hate I guess...

 

[Slamfire]

Thanks AJ and James. I'll get to the reading on the cylinder marking tomorrow because I want to go to sleep soon. But before I do so, a couple of things, just for fun...

NDL for 70'/21m is 50min...

NDL for 70' on 32% is not 50 mins. NDL for 80' is 50 mins...

Am I using an obsolete min deco table? I haven't seen these new min deco tables that AJ was referring to. Where can I find the new ones?

120min with an average depth of 70ft on 32% with o2 as the only deco gas.

Here's the right answer:
The best mix for 70' at 1.4 ppO₂ is 45%. Use the deco bottle O₂ to mix yourself a fresh new batch of 45%. The Equivalent Air Depth (EAD) of 45% at 70' is 38.7'. Round it up to 40'. According to the min deco table I posted above, the NDL for 40' on air is 160 mins. This is well within the 120 mins mark that you require. As for %CNS, the max for 1.4 is 150 mins. Again well within the 120 mins mark. So you end up doing a single gas no-deco dive.

 

[ucfdiver]

Thanks AJ and James. I'll get to the reading on the cylinder marking tomorrow because I want to go to sleep soon. But before I do so, a couple of things, just for fun...

NDL for 70' on 32% is not 50 mins. NDL for 80' is 50 mins...

Am I using an obsolete min deco table? I haven't seen these new min deco tables that AJ was referring to. Where can I find the new ones?
Here's the right answer:
The best mix for 70' at 1.4 ppO₂ is 45%. Use the deco bottle O₂ to mix yourself a fresh new batch of 45%. The Equivalent Air Depth (EAD) of 45% at 70' is 38.7'. Round it up to 40'. According to the min deco table I posted above, the NDL for 40' on air is 160 mins. This is well within the 120 mins mark that you require. As for %CNS, the max for 1.4 is 150 mins. Again well within the 120 mins mark. So you end up doing a single gas no-deco dive.

Careful quoting my quotes....I don't want to look like I'm the one that said NDL for 70' is 50min. Ratio deco uses a "set point" where you have one value to start with, and you adjust your NDL times up or down with depth. You're looking at Bühlmann based decompression tables and comparing to ratio deco, which is a mix of multiple algorithms and theories.

To clear up a few points of confusion many have, which are relevant to the discussion:
Ratio deco is not made to mirror an algorithm, that's important to realize, as many people seem to think it's a quick way to generate Bühlmann or VPM like tables. The other common misconception seems to be that you don't have to plan the dive with ratio deco and that it's all done in water...that's really not the case, as you need to know maximum deco time, even though ratio deco is an amazing tool for modifying the depth/time on the fly and remaining within your rock bottom allotment.

I know you were kidding, but as an aside, even your solution doesn't work as it only allows you to reside at avg depth, and could not reach max without violating 1.4 ppo2. To be honest, even 1.4ppo2 on a long dive like this where you're swimming multiple stage bottles is outside my comfort range.

AJ was referring to the new GUE tables for recreational diving. For dives of the nature described, those tables are fairly irrelevant. Either way, here's the conversation about that, including JJ's response-
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/dir/335746-gue-goes-tabular.html

 

[Slamfire]

To be honest, even 1.4ppo2 on a long dive like this where you're swimming multiple stage bottles is outside my comfort range.

It'll still work with 1.3 ppO₂. 1.3 will give you a bit more leeway if you're worried about oxtox and there will not be multiple stage bottles because it is a single gas dive. With a decent sac rate, you could even be able to do it with some twin 130's on your back. I'd have to make some calculations to confirm, but I want to go to sleep now.

Lamont, the training and the gear do work superbly well. It was a rhetorical argument.

Take care guys.

 

[ucfdiver]

It'll still work with 1.3 ppO₂. 1.3 will give you a bit more leeway if you're worried about oxtox and there will not be multiple stage bottles because it is a single gas dive. With a decent sac rate, you could even be able to do it with some twin 130's on your back. I'd have to make some calculations to confirm, but I want to go to sleep now.

Lamont, the training and the gear do work superbly well. It was a rhetorical argument.

Take care guys.

I don't think you could pull it off in the cave environment (remember 1/3rd penetration rule!) with only 130's, especially not with any flow at all.

Remember, stage bottles are used for single gas dives as well. If it were a hypoxic mix (less than .18 o2), you would often use a travel gas to get to depth, but in this case we're talking about a bottom gas stage.

As for using random gases, there's a multitude of reasons why that's not a good idea. First, we often make it to a cave site and find conditions undesirable, and have to go to another location. Gases which cover a variety of cave are best here. Second, we would have to remark stage bottles for nearly every dive. Third, it's incredibly inefficient as local shops cannot bank standard gases, and custom blends for the volume gone through here locally would take forever. Fourth, with standard gases we have an idea how much 10ft of extra depth, or 5 minutes of extra bottom time will gain us in deco. Once we go to best mix, it's impossible to keep that in the back of your mind. Another reason is that by using gases you're not used to, the possibility of getting on the wrong gas at the wrong depth goes up...For instance, if we mixed up a bottom stage for this 70ft dive with best mix, it would be easy to grab our 70 deco bottle the morning of the dive, and run a 1.6ppo2 when we mean to run a 1.4. Having stages marked helps reduce errors on the surface AND in the water.

Finally, as to the decent SAC comment...when planning longer range cave dives, I pad my SAC rate a decent amount. Nothing sucks more than driving 3-5 hours (or more), putting all that crap in the water, gearing up in the hot Florida sun, and having to turn 100ft shy of your goal. Sometimes we take a stage just to ensure we make it. Plus if you're in a cave, it's easy to miss a jump and have to backtrack some, so you always want to pad the dive plan. You'd be surprised how poor technique managing flow can really stress you out, so sometimes that extra gas just allows you to ride things out and get "in the zone".

Hope my post is at least somewhat helpful, I have a bad habit of being slightly sarcastic, short, and to the point, and some people have taken it as rude recently

 

[TSandM]

RikRaeder, your point about doing technical dives is probably a valid one. GUE and UTD BOTH use standard gases, and both limit END to 100 feet. In the 150 foot range, both would use 21/35 for bottom gas and 50% for deco. I don't think a diver trained by either agency would be very happy to do such a dive with someone on air.

It doesn't mean they won't dive with you, but you may have difficulty figuring out a way to do staged decompression diving that works for both of you, if you don't use helium.

 

[Slamfire]

Hope my post is at least somewhat helpful, I have a bad habit of being slightly sarcastic, short, and to the point, and some people have taken it as rude recently

Both you and AJ have been civil in this thread and IMO your contributions are helpful

....it's incredibly inefficient as local shops cannot bank standard gases, and custom blends for the volume gone through here locally would take forever.

If you're having trouble with shops and custom mixes, you can start your premixing yourself. Just use a transfill whip to transfer enough O₂ so that all that's left to do is to take your cylinders to the shop and have them top it up with air. The math is not complicated (PV=nRT) and if you do it right, the analyzer will always report results within 1% of your intended target.

In any case, this is the DIR section of SB and the wind blows in certain direction and it behooves me to not try to urinate against the wind. Besides, we are hijacking this thread taking it in this direction. So with that, I'll concede on the rest of your points. I particularly agree with the one on SAC rates. I always pad up my SAC when doing the plan. As I said before, I still have to do calculations to see if in reality the dive could be made with twin 130's. We'll pick up the other arguments later on in another forum .

RikRaeder, your point about doing technical dives is probably a valid one. GUE and UTD BOTH use standard gases, and both limit END to 100 feet. In the 150 foot range, both would use 21/35 for bottom gas and 50% for deco. I don't think a diver trained by either agency would be very happy to do such a dive with someone on air.

It doesn't mean they won't dive with you, but you may have difficulty figuring out a way to do staged decompression diving that works for both of you, if you don't use helium.

I'd say ymmv on this one, Lynne. I did the attached dive with a UTD trained dive buddy on air and 50%. He was also using air and 50%. I won't give up names, but I'll tell you that you've met this guy personally, Lynne. We had been going gradually and increasingly deeper on air. After every dive, we would discuss if we felt narcosis or if we saw evidence of narcosis in the other. It came to the point were he felt comfortable trying out this dive. We did and the dive went out exactly as planned with no incidents.

On this note, I've heard rumors that GUE will take away certifications from a diver for certain offenses. I do not know if UTD will do likewise. Is this true? If so can anyone provide an example of an offense of "de-certifying" magnitude.