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Message-ID: <33A9156E.17D5@sa*.ne*>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 07:18:06 -0400
From: "G. Irvine" <gmirvine@sa*.ne*>
Reply-To: gmirvine@sa*.ne*
Organization: Woodville Karst Plain Project
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To: Jason Rogers <gas@cu*.di*.co*.au*>
CC: rebreather@nw*.co*
Subject: Re: helium vs nitrogen
References: <199706190846.SAA28300@cu*.di*.co*.au*>
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Jason, I am amending that to "stroke who was trained by a stroke", as
per suggestipon and your quite corect and astute observation. The "or"
was a lame attempt by me at letting strokes off the hook, and there is
no reason to do so. A stroke is a stroke until he quits being a stroke. 

 One day, my former dive partner, Bill Gavin said, " you have to quit
that stroke shit", in repsonse to my propensity to come up with
differnet gear for different dives, instead of being smart and doing it
the same all the time. You see, I had purchased all kinds of stroke
gear, and was trying to find a way to use it.

   On the air thing, my instructor, Parker Turner , told me, "only a
stroke dives deep on air", and he had no exceptions to that rule. To
carry air bailout for a trimix dive is an admission of being a stroke
and a complete moron, but then we have no lack of that in tech diving,
since the biggest strokes in diving here in the states are the
instructors, as we have seen from the recent performance of a whole
group of these clowns which resulted in one of them having a heart
attack, and then jumping overboard and doing a deep air dive while
already dead, and then trying to defraud DAN on the insurance.

   What we need is stroke insurance for these guys .

Jason Rogers wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I posted a couple of things (rather flippant remarks) to Paul,
> while I thought I'd been chucked off the list.  I suspect that
> a corrupted address file on my end may be at fault.
> 
> Anyway, he's going to fwd them to the list, but I thought I'd
> amplify what I was saying.
> 
> When I first got on this list, I made some very rude remarks
> about people using air as the diluent for deep dives, and
> someone said in private mail, (paraphrased) "give these
> guys a break, most of them aren't trimix trained, and so air
> is all they have"
> 
> I was pretty gobsmacked by that.  Here's why I felt that way.
> 
> OC trimix is a pretty big step from OC air.  You're dealing with
> gas mixing and analyis, carrage of multiple mixtures (which are
> leathal if used at the wrong depth), much deeper dives, with
> the hugely higher consumption rates, and consequently, huge
> gas requirements (like 5 oversize cylinders...) and the use
> of gas switching deco.
> 
> All this is pretty new and a big task load for an air diver.
> 
> No wonder that ther is a fair bit of training normally
> required to get to this point.
> 
> Compare this with a diver using CC, who makes the switch to
> helium.
> 
> He half fills his cylinder (or sphere) with helium and tops
> it off with air.  Then he gets out a different set of
> tables, or puts in different options in his desktop deco
> software.
> 
> Suddenly the dives he was doing to 200 ft with air diluent
> aren't so hard any more.  Because he's reduced the FO2
> in the diluent to half what it was, he can stop playing with
> the on/off switch, he can give up the "leon slide", he just
> jumps into the water and has fun, but with no narcosis.
> 
> Where's the need for training in that?  Sure a super deep
> TMX dive is going to require substantial bailout, but
> the bailout from a 2 hour dive at 165 ft is nothing to
> sneeze at, even with air diluent!  If we're talking about
> helium in the CC set being "hard", we're missing the point.
> 
> Big dives are big dives, whatever the diluent.  You're still
> going to need to think hard about your options if the loop
> fails (and they *do* fail)  Of course, small dives, if they
> leave you with nothing to breathe for more than a minute or
> so are not much fun either, so, you should think hard about
> your options on small dives if the loop fails (Like what
> am I going to do if the hose falls off, and I'm suddenly
> 8 kg negative, with nothing to breathe.)
> 
> Big or small, helium or nitrogen you need to have a plan worked out
> beforehand for CC failures.
> 
> That's the background that I came from, that made me feel that
> people using air diluent for 200 ft dives are strokes who were
> trained by strokes.  (Note, not "or trained by strokes")
> 
> Cheers Jason =:)

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