Will,

I am new to this list so I don't even know if it will get posted but I'll
toss in my 2 cents worth anyway!<G> I just
had too since I'd hate to see someone make a costly mistake here..

I was involved in some mixed gas experimentation in the early 70s at Makai
Range for the UofH Marine Options Program in conjunction with the AEGIR
project and, along with dives on most gasses you can think of, we did a
number of dry dives on Argon. Basically as a narcosis reference...
Depending on the mix we did dives to 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 and 600 fsw.

It has been a long time so don't quote me on the mix but I believe it was a
50/50 or 60/40 Argon/Ox mix. and I am pretty sure Joe stopped the tests at
100fsw. anyway, he stopped the test series far short of the original
parameters.

It was HIGHLY narcotic to most of the divers in the program... Of course
with any gas you will find various reactions to the different diluents but
this one is one to stay away from.

We underwent various physiological tests on the dry dives in the chamber at
Makai. We had our brain waves being recorded as we took math tests,
physical dexterity tests and visual stimulus/brain response times and a lot
of other stuff... more than I care to remember<G>. 

One of the funny and memorable things that the guy running this torture
chamber on us stated was that Argon looked to be useful as a substitute for
Nitrous Oxide in the Hyperbaric Medicine arena!  NO way he'd have scheduled
us to do a wet dive on this stuff.

I tend to resist narcosis well with Nitrogen as the diluent but the argon
hit me hard at p/ds of around 100fsw. My partner for this series was a long
time diving buddy and was effected less by the Argon than I but he got
narced on air much faster then I under any workload.  After the Argon dive
he told me that he couldn't understand why I was laughing so much.... again
this was well short of the scheduled end of this series.

Of course it WOULD keep you a LOT warmer on your deco stops than the
heli-ox.. no more of those chills but you might not enjoy it if you were
busy trying to buddy breath your rig with a fish!<G>

Anyway, just my personal experience but there is no way on this planet I'd
use it as a deco gas.


Doug Peterson


--
Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.

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]