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>> What about us new cave divers?  I find it hard to take depths from
>> your average diver as being gospel.  I like to be able to determine
>> things that could effect my life for myself.

>I never take depths from anyone as gospel until I dive there at least
>once and see for myself. However, there's still no reason to carry
>multiple depth gauges because once again, your buddy is your backup.
>And in a system you know, then there's no real need to worry about a
>backup at all since the depth doesn't change.

I never even take gospel for gospel :^) What's written down today will
be crossed out and rewritten tomorrow...  When asking the depth of a
certain point in a cave, you better be sure you adjust for season
water height variation.  How much can this be, enough to make a big
difference - for example - Little River for one.  I agree on the
multiple depth gauge things in a buddy cave diving situation...
Openwater is a different story (for me) because I often dive solo,
but, my backup gauge is my watch, which is not only a depth gauge, but
keeps my dive profile too in case my computer craps out on me!  That
way I can always run a simulator after the dive to see how long before
I can do a dive again (you have to have all the dives from the
beginning of the trip to do this).  But, since I've never had a
computer crap out on me (knock on a sunken wooden ship) :^)

>> I currently use a U.S. Divers Monitor I strapped to my wrist, but I
>> can see how a computer would be useless with a gas switch.

I could NEVER strap something to my wrist while cave diving, well, not
without it getting beaten to shit and back.  I hose mount my primary
computer.  My secondary computer gets tucked off under the belt, I
only have to look at it if the first computer fails.

>Computers suck for cave diving. They are really screwy when it comes
>to long dives (take one to 100' for 90 minutes and you'll see what I
>mean). They pad the hell out of the deco time which just causes you
>to sit on a log for weeks longer then you want. And, if you start
>using O2 or multiple gas switches for deco, whatever then computers
>don't work at all.

Well, they make keeping the profiles nice - but, you have to buy *2*
so you can alternate dives with them to keep the profiles :^) A good
profiling watch works well for this situation, but, their profiling
times are limited too...  If only someone made something without
artificial limits.

>Just spend $219 and buy DECOM, a good slate, and a UWATEC bottom
>timer. Write down some sets of tables on that slate, and you're good
>to go. Save the $395 or whatever that Aladdin costs or that Suunto
>costs. Use the $180 you save to buy stage bottles or some vital piece
>of equipment.

Now, if someone just made a watertight version of the HP Palmtop 200
you could bring DECOM along with you :^) You could also proabably keep
pacman or the game du jour loaded too (but nothing from microsoft, it
would take too much ram) :^)

-Carl-

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