Technically the standard gases are +/- 10 ft, so you'd be ok diving Nitrox 32 to 109.
You wouldn't know it from the Fundies material or class presentation, but good to know.
More importantly, without turning this into an at what cutoff should you use trimix debate, at that depth you have some degree of impairment, whether you notice or not. There is some depth below which you should be adding some helium. Who sets that exact number on a given dive? Well you do of course. "No DIR divers just DIR dives."
Of course you have some degree of impairment, but 100' END, while objective, is nevertheless a somewhat arbitrary standard, as individuals vary so much both among themselves, as well as how they're affected on any given day. All I'm saying is that if I know my particular group is less affected by narcosis than most, if we're comfortable using a deeper END in the prevailing environment that should be our choice. Nowhere in the class material or presentation is it indicated that is the case, although that may well be the practice outside of class.
Air for shallow depths seems to be a lot less of an issue these days. My understanding is that the standards officially or unofficially allow it even for courses now. And as Lynne pointed out everyone seems to have been "guilty" of diving air at one point or another.
To quote (or paraphrase) Rob in class, "Air is for the pool, we don't dive air in OW." I see no sign in the Standards (V5.1) of any loosening of this.
I don't find SPG over the shoulder (I assume that's what you mean by down the corrugated hose) to be an improvement, since when it is on the left hip d-ring it is both clipped down nicely and serves to hold the d-ring so other things can be attached there (rather like the backup lights on the shoulder d-rings). It's also a d-ring that doesn't get as much use at the Fundies-level, as opposed to the shoulder d-rings where I assume you clip yours, which always seem to be quite full even on basic dives.
And that's cool, you know what's best for you, just as I find the opposite is what's best for me, and we're both happy. Nor do I clip the SPG hose to the shoulder D-ring, (at least, I haven't done so yet, but plan to try it); I just route it down the corrugated hose and hold all three together with the inner tube rings. It's not that I can't clip/unclip the SPG from my hip (after all, I was doing it all weekend), I just find it inefficient to do so. Or as someone put it in the discussion in the Hogarthian forum, "do you rig the gas gauge in your car so that it's buried between the door and the seat by your left hip, and you unclip it to read it?" And yes, I can and do keep a running estimate in my head of gas usage.
I do think that light cable under the long hose makes a certain amount of sense. Do I choose to dive it that way? Nope. If I'm going to be 99% standardized, I figure I may as well be 100% standardized and not have to deal with slight variations. Although I admit that in the case of the light cord, it's hard to see how standardization is at all necessary. I also think that light cord over long hose is more convention than standard.
For me, doing away with a can light altogether makes the most sense. The dives I (eventually) want to do aren't multi-hour penetration dives, they are OW wreck penetration dives with max. run times of 1.5 hours or so. I think LED lights have now reached the stage where they are bright enough and burn long enough to meet my requirements, and eliminate any need for a big battery canister and the cord that joins it to the light head, with all the additional failure points and entanglement issues that introduces.
But I also have a philosophical disagreement with the use of lights as practiced by the team diving agencies. No one could question the need for them in caves or in other (dark) overhead environments and (usually) at night. Where I diverge is the use of a light constantly on for passive light communication. Yes, this decreases the need to twist and turn to keep visual track of your buddy(ies), and in an emergency it may also shorten your reaction time for an OOG or similar emergency. Those are valid arguments, but for me, I prefer to keep light use to a minimum and accept the higher risks involved. I dislike light pollution, whether above or underwater, and often hike or ski by starlight, and have even done so briefly (in Monterey) while diving. The problem I have with the constant use of lights, especially powerful ones, is similar to the situation described in "The Complete Walker" (by Colin Fletcher) on why he usually prefers to do without fires, despite their advantages:
"Yet as often as not I do without campfires. Perhaps laziness has a lot to do with it. But I am aware that a fire cuts you off from the night. Within the fire's domain you exist in a special, private, personal, isolated world. It is only when you walk away and stand for a while as a part of the silence and immensity beyond that you understand the restriction. And then you find that the silent, infinite, mysterious world that exists beyond the campfire is truer than the restricted world that exists around it -- and that in the end it is more rewarding. I walk out into wilderness primarily, I think, to re-establish a sense of unity with the rest of the world -- with the rock and the trees and the animals and the sky and its stars. Or perhaps I mean only that when I return to the city a renewed sense of this affinity is, above all, what I bring back with me. A campfire, by its very charms, disrupts my sense of inclusion."
And that's how I feel about the use of dive lights in general, which is why I prefer to keep their use to a minimum, and use the least powerful light that suffices for the conditions. For day dives I prefer to use a tight spot backup light for looking in crevices or to bring out the color of an individual animal or plant, but the use is limited; in a typical 1 hour dive my light is on for well under 5 minutes. At night, I feel even more strongly about the use of overpowering lights which often scare off or alter the behavior of many of the animals I dive to see. It's not at all surprising that Fletcher normally backpacked solo and that I adopted/adapted many of my own backpacking techniques from his, or that I found his outdoor philosophy so congenial.
Hi Guy,
So I certainly don't have any issue with somebody diving air at the breakwater. I'm not going to call you a stroke or assert rule #1 on you. In circumstances where I don't have good options I'll use air for shallow profiles myself - and have recently even. Air isn't the most flexible of gas fills and for me I'd much rather have a tank filled with 32% so if plans change and I decide to go deeper than planned I don't have to worry about it. But really, if you're keeping the END less than about 100 feet and doing the appropriate deco for the dive nobody is really going to care.
Now if you were to tell me about how you were going to dive air to 220 feet then we're probably going to have a conversation about dead friends of mine and how I don't like going to funerals.
Who does like going to funerals, especially our own? But go to it we all will eventually, and I think it was George Santayana who said something like "there is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval".
Funny you should mention deep air. We had a group from my dive club in Chuuk last year off the Odyssey, and since the Odyssey doesn't have He and they wanted to dive the more technical wrecks, it was deep air or nothing. I know at least one of their dives had a max. depth of 217 ft. I understand that at least one of the shore shops in Chuuk now has He, and the price has come down in the last year from $4/cu.ft. to 'only' $2/cu.ft.
Would I do that dive on air given the choice? Nope, but if it's a question of doing it that way (as was the case in Bikini when it was still open) or nothing, then everyone has to make their own decision on how much risk they'll accept. I'd probably go for it, although I'd first want to work up to such depths. But what would happen if I and my team, assuming all GUE certified, were to show up on a BAUE charter on the Escapade and announce that, having assessed the risks and rewards, we'd decided to do an air dive to say 170 feet? Does the situation that gsk3 described, "no DIR divers just DIR dives", apply, and no one would say anything? Or would we be prevented from even doing the dive, and/or would GUE demand our C-cards back? I don't know, but I'm trying to establish the limits, because I know what the written material implies.
Similarly with solo diving - we don't allow it in our club and I don't do it myself anymore, but I don't lose too much sleep over people solo diving who are careful about it. Still, I can't help reading your post and hearing echos of arguments I had with a friend of mine who I miss very much and still think about every day. Now chances are you're not likely to do anything as out-of-bounds as he did but all the same I think it's worth considering that we've arrived at the conclusions and methodologies that we have based on hard won experience. It's not because we're all gung-ho about joining a cult.
Assuming I'm thinking about the same person, I never got a chance to meet him as I only started diving at the end of Jan. 2007, and I wish I had. And no, I wouldn't have gone out solo in the situation he did. But I fully defend his right to decide to do so, and lose his life in the process. We have to live our lives for ourselves, not our friends, even when our loss may cause them pain. Given the ultimate choice, I'll happily die in my sleep without any fuss, after just having returned from doing something I like and having a good meal. Second choice, I'd die while doing something I loved; this year or last, the husband of a congresswoman died shortly after returning from the summit of Cho Oyu. He'd called her on his sat phone from the high camp and told her how tired he was, but he was happy, and then died shortly after the call ended.
Either is preferable to dying in a hospital with my mind gone, being cleaned of my own filth and turned to avoid bedsores whenever the orderlies can be bothered. Plain existence isn't life.
[
Which brings me to my last point. I really just don't understand where this fear of "stifling individual initiative" comes from. Our group consists of one of the most diverse groups of people you'll ever find. Different politics, different backgrounds, different religions, different interests, different reasons for diving, different styles of diving. Some like to stay in one place and look for little critters. Some like to put the hammer down and scooter to the ends of the earth and back. Some like to take pictures, some like to just look around. Some people make maps, some don't care if they're lost. What we have in common are agreed upon standards for diving. Within the group there has been no problem getting teams together with similar goals. Sort of like everybody agreeing to drive on the right side of the road and with cars that have the gas on the right, brake in the middle and clutch (if necessary) on the left. Sure, you could mix it up and put the gas on the left, and the clutch on a lever next to the hand-brake but why? Would just be confusing when you went to rent a car.
$.02
Clinton
You should have read the thread, IIRR at RBW, on why the dimmable capability of the new MB-Sub LED can light was not DIR, owing to the extra electronics which increased the complexity and reduced the reliability, while providing no useful capability. Of course, in the middle of this argument, Halcyon introduced their new EOS LED can light, which features (among other things) dimming capability:shocked2:. So presumably, now that JJ has given his stamp of approval, the objections will fade away, to the point that in a year or so the same people who were arguing that dimmable capability was not DIR will be arguing just as vehemently that all DIR lights should have it!
That's the type of attitude I'm referring to. Speaking strictly of the local BAUE/UTD people I've met, with maybe one exception that attitude doesn't seem to apply, but it's undeniable that there still exist pockets of it, especially on the internet.
Oh, this is so true, and how much money I would have saved if I didn't keep insisting on trying to be clever!
Guy, don't worry about it. You'll incorporate into your diving as much, or as little of what you learned as suits you.
Pretty much what I thought and said would likely be the case a couple of months back when looking ahead to Fundies, but I'm still too inexperienced with the practice of DIR in the real world (as opposed to class) to say for sure. For all I know, with more experience I may find my attitude changing as Clinton's did. Knowing my opinions I doubt it, but I'm not making a decision yet.
Clinton's giving an example of someone who has evolved into MORE of a DIR approach, but I know people who have evolved away from it. And I know people who solo dive with a pony, but team dive with everything as one would expect it to be for a GUE or UTD team. What Fundies did is give you a common ground with a bunch of other divers, should you decide to dive with them. What else you do with it is entirely up to you.
And I expect I'll fall in that middle ground, DIMW when appropriate, and DIR when that's appropriate. The skills, knowledge and experience are useful either way.
Guy
