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Sorry for doubling up this post, but many people who are sick to the point of ignoring TDI bashing should be aware of this as an independant issue. If you already read it, it's the bit about conservatism values in dive software, so move on now. > David, > > The profile was based on Abyss 100. Amongst some of the physiological parameters > set included setting > 'Smoker' - there was one smoker amongst us, the Course Director. > Age = 41-50. The oldest were the course director & his assistant. The rest of were all younger. > Slightly overwieght - which Hennie and I were (say by 15kg). > We were all in good physical condition (or appreared so). All were active divers involved in > Cave and Extended Range diving. > > Dive suite and environment, water temp was set 10 degrees celcius, and suite type was set > to 5mm wet. Hennie & myself were indeed wearing dry suites. I used Argon. I can't remeber > at this stage what Hennie used for inflation. > Look, I want to say this once, and loudly: THOSE CONSERVATISM MODIFIERS ARE ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. There is no recognized method (by decompression experts) for adding conservatism for workload, fitness, and cold - in fact, the US Navy did studies that show deco models completely fall apart in well-chilled divers. Chris Parrett knows this, but thought he'd be a real feature-hound if he added in all that mumbo-jumbo about suit type, fitness level, etc. And sure enough, the uneducated are awed by all the shiny lights. I always suspected as much, but didn't fully realize just how much bullshit this is until I sat down and coded up a decompression program (freeware, soon to be released). If you see a program that has all those black-magic modifiers it should tell you one thing: the programmer is full of shit. He reached way into his butt and pulled out a conservatism scale for factors even the experts know little about. If you see anything but a simple, single, conservatism value in dive software, the author is pounding sand up your ass, and venturing into territory where the *real* experts won't tread. Caveat Emptor. BTW, I am NOT suggesting that Parret's software was responsible for this death - in fact, I highly doubt that, it sounds like the guy was predisposed for deco problems (PFO?) Abyss has so much default conservatism built in, it is useless for anything but a bounce (which this was). -Will -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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