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George, I have followed the posts on deep air for some time now and I had an experience that drove the point home with me this weekend that I thought I would share with you. I have always been a proponent of deep air. I was comfortable on air deep and thought it to be more flexible and less complex than mix. I grew up with air and did the majority of my deep dives on air. During the 80's there was no such thing as trimix on the west coast so we did 250ft+ exposures on air all the time. We thought we were tek if we used oxygen for the deco. (Which was sparingly at best.) No big deal. We got away with it. And of course, I was acclimated to narcosis and it didn't affect me until over 250. This weekend I had a chance to do a chamber dive for the first time. And yes, it was preplanned, not the bad kind. After a lecture from the local doctor, he took us to 165 for 20 minutes. No big deal. I have been diving that profile for years. Before I went down I calculated some math problems that I had used for my NAUI Advanced class when I still taught. I got a time of 1 minute and 37 seconds to complete all the problems. We descended slowly to the preplanned depth of 165. I was looking forward to doing a dive where I didn't have to be concerned with diving or equipment. I wanted to see how narcosis affected me straight on without any distractions. At 165 feet after 5 minutes at depth I recalculated the problems at a speedy 4 minutes 7 seconds. Immediately, I did them again. 6 minutes, 47 seconds doing the same problems I had just done! My reaction time had slowed down and my body was being affected. My voice was weird from the pressure affecting my vocal cords and I felt high as a kite. I asked the chamber operator to put on a Jimi Hendrix album over the mic. I was a complete shipwreck by the time 20 minutes was up. I was laying on the floor laughing and looking at the balloons I had brought wondering why they had gotten smaller. After doing our deco stops and got out of the chamber I reworked the 20 of the problems. 3 minutes and 42 seconds. I checked them all later. The first time I did them on the surface I got none wrong. The second time I got three wrong, the third I got 10 wrong, and the last time on the surface I got four wrong. I felt like crap the rest of the day. The nitrogen really screwed me up. I had felt like this after wet dives and blamed it on the cold water. My ears itched from the dry chamber air for about two hours afterward as well. Probably a slight skin bends. I have felt like I did in the chamber on wet dives and just refocused on my gages and tried not to screw up. I, luckily, got away with my deep diving air days. I got hit face first with what narcosis and nitrogen can do to you. Because of this experience I have given up deep air. If I go past 130 it will be on mix from now on. I now realize how mind numbing narcosis can be now and what a toll nitrogen takes on your body. It was quite an experience after 15 years of deep air diving but the proof is there. There is no question in my mind that deep air is a killer and is a large factor in a lot of the fatalities and accidents we are seeing. Food for thought. Todd ===== __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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