Sherwood Wisdom Opinions

[TheRedHead]

While the Pelagic computers aren't targeted to the intentional decompression market, I have had not any problem using it for mild deco (10 or so minutes max required deco). Just because it shows a ceiling depth of 10' doesn't mean you have to zoom right up to the ceiling. As with all diving, one needs to have the gas to do the desired profile.
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I'm surprised that you were unhappy with the conservativeness of the Wisdom, but consider the Cobra to be liberal enough for your diving.

Zooming up to 10 feet is not what I meant at all. I shouldn't make these posts late at night. I did a deep dive planned on ZPlanner to 145 feet that incorporated deep stops at 50, 40, 30, 20 feet. Although I don't know for sure, I don't think the Wisdom's deco model gave me very much "credit" (so to speak) for those stops. It insisted upon 12 minutes at 10 feet. I did the time just to make it happy, even though that stop was not in my plan.

It's very liberal when pushing the NDLs with time at recreational depths, but seems to penalize you when you dive deeper than recreational limits.

I haven't had too many problems with the Suunto because lately I've been diving Nitrox on just about every dive. If I'm diving deep, I use it guage mode.

Added: I was never unhappy with the liberalism of the Wisdom - I was just unhappy about not having local service and support for it.

And to further clarify what I so ineptly stated last night is that there is one scenario which the Wisdom doesn't handle well and seems to heavily penalize you: if on your first dive of the day you take the Wisdom past recreational dive limits and cause it to go into deco mode not from exceeding recreational dive limit times but exceeding the depth limits of the NDL model, causing it to switch to the Navy Table model (or whatever modification thereof), it appears to impart a heavy penalty restricting your depth and time on the next repetitive dive.

Otherwise, it is a very liberal computer which will allow you to push the NDLs.

 

[Rev. Blade]

I dove a Wisdom for a couple of years. The only comparison with a Cobra I can make is during a trip to Belize - 2 dives a day, 4th day did the Blue Hole (3 dives), 1st dive to 140+ with ascent starting at about 8 minutes and another 25ish at 30 feet, 2nd and 3rd to 80ish, avg 50-60 and 45 minutes. The Wisdom did just fine. A friend of mine did a slightly shallower profile, maybe 10 feet or so but similar times. He was diving a Cobra and it locked him out during the 3rd dive.

I was very disappointed when I read (after buying my SUUNTO Vyper) that some computers will lock-out if you do not follow their advice. The good news for someone who may sometimes plan an agressive profile, while using a conservative computer, is that the SUUNTO computer do not lock out when put into a deco mode. They lock out if you don't do the deco stops. Their literature also says it will calculate for deep stops and/or slow ascents.

I also dove the Blue Hole and (because there isn't much to see between 40' and 135') also got to 140'. We started our ascent at 7 minutes into the dive with 1 minute NDL showing. Making a slow ascent, I was still at 107' when I was 9 minutes into the dive, and my Vyper showed 7 minutes "ASC TIME" (a 4 minute deco + 3 minute normal stop). 12 minutes into the dive, I was at 74', and my computer said I was back to having 9 minutes of no deco time. No stops needed on this dive, just a slow ascent.

Our group ended up doing a longish stop anyway. Another boat started dropping fish heads in the water, and we sat on the sand watching the flurry of Black Tip Reef sharks (while we did our best to not look like food.)

My second dive that day went deco at the 30 minute mark. I moved farther up the wall to make my computer happy. No problem with an additional 40 minutes on that dive... just a bit shallower than some of the guys.

A long surface interval before dive 3, looking at boobies (the flying kind, at the nature reserve) kept my computer plenty happy. Never less than 12 minutes NDL despite a quick look at something at 88' and a total dive time of 66 minutes.

Anyway, the SUUNTOS are fine with deco diving if you actually do the stops it tells you to do. Even the Bikini Atoll dive master accepts a SUUNTO Vytec for their deco diving. Unless the computer can handle gas switching (to a high O2 gas) for the deco stop, the hang time would be pretty long on their profiles... but the Bikini boys don't seem to mind the Vytec profile, when programed for the actual gas you breathe. (edited to add back one of the brackets for the "quote")