Place of dive tables in modern diving (Split from the basic thread)

[tursiops]

I.e. PADI RPD is only 66% useful. Could be worse...

IRL table 3 is the only one I ever look at, so it's not redundant for me. Because it's the one thing my computer's plan mode does not tell me.

Unless you have a Shearwater.

 

[boulderjohn]

LOL. I have TWO Wheels, which even when both are "calibrated," allow me to get lots of different answers and match almost anything. Kind of like Gradient Factors.

I have mentioned this story recently--if it was in this thread, I apologize for repeating myself.

When I did my IE, when I did one of the wheel problems, my answer came out exactly in between two of the choices on the multiple choice exam. I did it several times, getting the same answer each time. I finally closed my eyes, pointed at the page, and took the closest answer. It was wrong.

The instructor had to teach me the right answer, so he went through the problem with me with his wheel, getting the correct answer. I then handed him my wheel and asked him to use that. He did it again, and he got my wrong answer.

Yes, it was correctly calibrated.

The correct answer, BTW was not one of the choices. The correct answer was "somewhere in between this point and that point," because in reality nothing in decompression science is so exact that my answer was incorrect.

 

[Ayisha]

I'll put the Rule of 120 against Min Deco any time for ease of use!...

I was away diving when this thread was going on, so it took me a while to read this. I'm not sure about the way UTD does Minimum Deco, but GUE's Minimum Deco on the Fly is basically a rule of 130 for Nitrox 32% (or 30/30). So it's very simple. If you're using 32%, just subtract the depth from 130 feet (yes, imperial) to give you the approximate time (number of minutes) at depth. Very similar to the Rule of 120. Repetitive dives are easy to calculate as well. If your surface interval is 1-2 hours, you have 50% MDL. If your SI is over 2 hours, you have 75% of your MDL. Pretty easy to remember.

My information is old and I don't know if Minimum Deco is still being taught the same way, but this is the info from 2014 (on a bit hard to read background):