Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep trying 'til I get it right... and
I'm trying not to die or injure myself in the effort.
Reading the DAN and British fatality reports, a large number are directly
or indirectly due to out-of-gas events. Either people underestimate their
gas needs or exceed them due to exertion, emergency, getting lost etc.
Then they either die (no gas), or go to the surface without meeting their
deco obligation and are injured.
Rebreathers truly give the opportunity to largely avoid being in an
out-of-gas situation. Sure they can have a catastropic failure. But
equipment failure is not usually what kills divers; it's being too close
to your maximum gas supply, even using the rule of thirds or fifths.
With a rebreather you just have a much greater margin of gas supply. Of
course this may lead someone to build up a deco obligation that cannot be
met with on-board gas, but it should be enough to get you to a surface
supplied station. Rich Pyle showed a couple of scenarios at the RB Conf
for surface staged supply in the event of failure that looked sound,
fairly simple and an important safety concept.
In summary, with the right training and planning, I think that CCRs offer
considerable safety possibilities over OC to the tech diver because of the
increased gas supply and the ability to dive at a fixed pPO2.
-ph
*******************************************************************
* Peter Heseltine, M.D., F.A.C.P. *
* Professor of Medicine *
* University of Southern California LAC+USC Medical Center *
* Tel: 213/226-6705 1200 North State Street *
* Fax: 213/226-2479 Los Angeles, CA 90033-1084 *
* Eml: heseltin@hs*.us*.ed* USA *
*******************************************************************
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]