Wisdom-2 Liberal or Conservative???

[Charlie99]

I find the conservatism of the cobra comes more into play on the way up.
If you pass the recommended accent rate you will be penalized with an extra mandatory stop besides your regular safety stop. and also once you finish your safety and ascend to fast it will give more mandatory time so you will have to go back down and do time. Also if you pass your deco time you will be penalized on your safety stop with mandatory time.

This highlights an important difference between the Wisdom and the Cobra.

The Wisdom simply tracks depth and time to calculate N2 loading. It doesn't care if you do a polaris ascent. It doesn't care if you yo-yo up and down repeatedly. It doesn't care about reverse profiles. It simply keeps track and dissolved gas. YOU are responsible for diving a good profile. YOU are responsible for adding additional conservatism if you "misbehaved" in some way.

The Cobra attempts to add appropriate conservatism for 'misbehavior'. Unfortunately, what exactly is going on is not documented or public knowledge, and it's hard to figure out sometimes what is going on.

Which type of computer is optimal depends a lot upon what sort of person you are.
If you are going to blindly follow your computer, then Suunto is definitely the better one. If you want to understand why your computer is saying what it's saying, the the Oceanic is better -- but you need to take responsibility for your profile and add conservatism when appropriate.

Charlie Allen

 

[DA Aquamaster]

...also, by 'tricking' the computer by programming in a 'bogus' NITROX %, you're messing up the computer's ability to properly track 'oxygen toxicity', I'm not sure this is a good idea.

When you consider the PPO2s and bottom times involved in single gas recreational diving, you won't have the gas to bust the single dive exposure limit at a PP02 of 1.4 and you'd really have to dive your butt off to exceed the 24 hour limit. Besides, if the diver is nitrox certified they can tack it like any non nitrox computer equipped diver.

Besides, I don't think I have ever hit the oxtox limit on wisdom. Now for technical diving with long bottom times ata ppo2 of 1.4 and longer deco times at a PPO2 of 1.6 oxtox is a much more important consideration.