billt4sf
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Hey OP here. Sorry I have not been back to this until now.
What motivated me to do the poll is that I think there is a YUUUUUUGE gap between what RECREATIONAL divers ACTUALLY do and what those of us on scubaboard (or other scuba social media) do. It really annoys me.
Maybe for nitrox checking, it's not as bad as I have been thinking. We're getting ready to go on a LOB, I'll look more carefully to see what the other divers do.
To be honest I think the whole nitrox thing is highly over-rated for most recreational divers. Most of us use 32% (if anything) so all we need to know is that the MOD is 110 feet and the dives themselves are structured to go no deeper than that anyway. To see a gauge indicate 32.5 ... 32.4 ... etc. isn't that meaningful. Who knows how carefully it was calibrated? Almost no one without their own gauge looks for that. And isn't it true that the nitrox may have been mixed by the .. I think it's called the "partial fill"` method? Which recreational divers understand what's going on?
And how do we know the "air" we supposedy have is not nitrox? Who checks that?
Beyond that, how do we know the gas is uncontaminated in other respects? CO is one risk, we never check for that. I bet there are others.
We can check all the gauges we want, but I have the feeling that we're diving more on hope (and trust in the operator) than on facts that we have independently verified.
- Bill
What motivated me to do the poll is that I think there is a YUUUUUUGE gap between what RECREATIONAL divers ACTUALLY do and what those of us on scubaboard (or other scuba social media) do. It really annoys me.
Maybe for nitrox checking, it's not as bad as I have been thinking. We're getting ready to go on a LOB, I'll look more carefully to see what the other divers do.
To be honest I think the whole nitrox thing is highly over-rated for most recreational divers. Most of us use 32% (if anything) so all we need to know is that the MOD is 110 feet and the dives themselves are structured to go no deeper than that anyway. To see a gauge indicate 32.5 ... 32.4 ... etc. isn't that meaningful. Who knows how carefully it was calibrated? Almost no one without their own gauge looks for that. And isn't it true that the nitrox may have been mixed by the .. I think it's called the "partial fill"` method? Which recreational divers understand what's going on?
And how do we know the "air" we supposedy have is not nitrox? Who checks that?
Beyond that, how do we know the gas is uncontaminated in other respects? CO is one risk, we never check for that. I bet there are others.
We can check all the gauges we want, but I have the feeling that we're diving more on hope (and trust in the operator) than on facts that we have independently verified.
- Bill