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<CHKBOONE@ao*.co*> wrote: > >>Anthony wrote: > ... Viz measured in millimetres, > if that, with sort of a brown glow to the water in the first few feet and > solid black below that. ... > >Sounds like some really great diving Anthony! We do this because we can, not because it makes any sense at all. >I'm curious as to how you managed to read any gauges during this dive - or >did you just wing it on intuition ? I figured depth on how much ear-clearing I did on the way down, and was counting to myself for the elapsed time. When we came back up, I had to take my gauges out of the water to read them, and my guesses of 30 feet and 5 minutes turned out to be spot-on. Not that I claim to be able to guess depth to the nearest foot or anything. As for air, as long as I didn't hear a freeflow and didn't stay too long or deep I knew I had more than enough. There are times I'd really appreciate a head-up display (HUD, like in fighter aircraft windscreens) of depth and runtime built into my mask, for things like this, or deep dives with sharply limited bottom times, or when my hands are full and I'm doing something. Maybe not the thing for casual rec diving, but useful for most technical applications. >Your description of the visibility exactly describes some diving I did in the >Kentucky lake section of the Tenn. River many many years ago. We could not >read gauges because if they were close enough to get any light on they were >too close to focus on. You could get a rough idea from the blurr if there >was enough contrast between needles and faces on analog instruments but >digital displays would have been useless. My buddy claimed to be able to sort-of read his instruments after some contortions with gauge and light in front of his mask, not that this was made any easier by holding each other's straps to stay together. >We also used J valves because even though you could often tell by the >breathing through a double hose regulator about where you stood supply wise >the work level and concentration made this somewhat unreliable. On shallow winter dives I usually have my backup reg on a pony bottle and the long hose on the main tank. It saves reconfiguring regs when I'm not using my doubles, although I'd look favourably on a Y valve if one came my way. >I haven't done anything in this kind of vis in a long time and wondered if >you knew some new tricks I hadn't heard of. I hope it will be an equally long time before I ever do this again. -- Anthony DeBoer http://www.onramp.ca/~adb/ adb@he*.re*.or* (here) adb@ge*.co* (work) #include "std.disclaimer" -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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