Nitrox course. What's the point?

My latest dive to the gunboat,

 

An automotive analogy:
- Back in the dark ages, to go to an unfamiliar store or town, you got out a physical map, planned out all the turns and took the map with you. If you missed a turn and got lost you pulled over, reconsulted the map, figured out where you were, made a new plan and tried again. Hopefully, this didn't happen too often on your way there or back.
- Today, your smartphone plans and displays multiple routes, tells you the turns as they come up and updates with a new route if you miss a turn.

I do not think many who have experienced both ways of driving would willingly go back to the old style. Beyond 'let the wind take us where it will' road trips.

Back to diving:
A dive computer does the same as that smartphone.
I understand you can dive without one, particularly if you are very disciplined. But you are risking diving blindly if things go too far off track.

 

Actually the risk is the opposite of how you describe it, instead of looking at a map and planning a route including an alternative and bringing the map with you, instead you head off with the smartphone in the blind hope the battery doesn’t die or the coverage doesn’t fail leaving you in the middle of nowhere lost.

 

Yep, that's what I do, either with my smart phone or a GPS device. Sounds crazy, huh. I bet there are a few other people like that as well.

 

Hard to beat a map.

 

The odds of my plan recomputing 'smartphone', backup 'smartphone', buddies 'smartphone' and buddies backup 'smartphone' all dying is very low.

But you have only a very small sliver of that map underwater with you. Not even the map, just a few alternate sequences of turns that you wrote down. The dive computer brings your whole desktop planning software, the map, down with you, though with a more limited interface.

 

Don’t get me wrong computers are a marvellous invention, but I only need to scribble out a map of where I want to go and a plan how to get there and back. There’s something beautiful about simplicity that appeals to me.

 

Honestly, this thread went further than I anticipated. Some people with much more experience than me intervened and I don’t really have the time to catch up. But I will try.

 

I read the first post and skipped the rest. I'll respond to that.

1) take nitrox class only if you need it. Cheapest way is the online only version where you go into the shop to take the test and they show you how to measure o2 content in a tank.

You may consider nitrox for deeper dives where you need a longer NDL like wrecks. Or many dives in a day like a liveaboard.

2) as you get good at diving continue to improve your bouyancy control. You should be able to descend and stop and hover 1-3 ft above the floor for a min. Your hover should require no fin or arm movements. Same goes for a target depth. Until you can do that, even during an emergency, you really shouldnt be playing with enriched gases.

Now with enrich gases you'll need to be able to tell your computer its enrich to use the benefits of extended NDLs or less total accumulation of nitrogen. Both these things a dive shop probably isnt too helpful unless you plan on having a DM or instructor with you all the time

 

Yeah caught me out I should have specified nitrox 32%. But then again we could change the PPO2 from 1.4 to 1.6