The Last 10 Feet

[AstroDad]

Beware of operator "error" when using a dive puter. It took me a few dives to figure out that if you move that puter around with your hand too much while ascending, it can/will throw off the ascent rate. I was letting mine hang down (console type) and would lift it up occasionally to monitor progress (I follow the bubbles up). That "lifting up" process would show up as a +60ft/min ascent rate in the graph....

BTW: I've been diving for 20 years but only recently bought a dive puter. I notice a number of folks who say they keep their eyes glued to their puter screen on the way up. I don't seem to be able to stare at my puter while also keeping an eye open to surface danger while ascending. Those of you who stare - how do you monitor what's above your head as you ascend?

 

[TeddyDiver]

I don't seem to be able to stare at my puter while also keeping an eye open to surface danger while ascending. Those of you who stare - how do you monitor what's above your head as you ascend?

Horizontally face up :sarcasm:

edit: There's also a difference doing ascends with computers:
As a computer, just looking ascend "indicator"
As a depth gauge/bottom timer, looking the depth and time
edit

 

[Aeolus]

Who said "don't sweat the small stuff??" If you ascend too fast you can die. That's big stuff. And yeah, I guess I'm a little obsessive-compulsive, too...

Anyway, I'm a new diver (22 dives), and I'm trying to improve my skills, including how I ascend. So I'm going back over my previous dives to see how I've been doing.

And I really don't like the Cobra's 10 second minimum sample rate for graphs. Hell, you can do a lot in 10 seconds. I want to be able to look back and see if there's EVER a point in my dive where I exceeded the max. ascent rate, and with a 10 sec sample rate you can never be sure.

For example, a while back we were diving a reef in some pretty big surge, and entered a crevice. The surge drew us in pretty quickly, and the crevice got progressively shallower, then it drew us out. It happened pretty quickly, so for all I know it could have drawn us up 5 or 10 feet in a few seconds. Well, maybe 5. But nothing on my graph shows that. Luckily nothing happened, but if I had some symptoms afterwards I wouldn't have been able to understand what happened.

When I ascend, I keep my eyes glued to the ascent rate indicator on my Cobra, and make sure I'm at only one or two bars. Wish it had a numerical ascent rate indicator instead of bar graphs.

Anyway, anyone know of a computer with a numerical ascent rate indicator AND a shorter sampling rate (2 seconds sounds nice...)? Would also be nice to have a little warning that comes up on the display and stays on which indicates you exceeded a pre-set ascent rate.

The other thing I don't like about the Cobra is that the time display is on a different screen from the Dive Display, so it's an either/or: you monitor time or you monitor the ascent bar graph.

Jim,
I am attaching a link to a website that sells dive loggers. I have one of the Sensus Ultras and I love it. It tracks both depth and temperature. You can set it to do almost anything you want. It will store 1500 hours of dives at the 10 second rate or 150 at one second. You can download data to your computer for more detail later and include other dive info. It will compute your SAC and ther is a plce for buddy info and notes. The battery is self contained and wil;l last a long time. They have been great to work with and always work to make the experience with them perfect. They are priced reasonably. They also have a superb fish ID program that is fantastic.

http://reefnet.ca/products/sensus/