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MV> ? Are you saying it is beyond the capacity of learning ? for how much % , 80 or 20 % ( Would it make that much difference , anyway ) DB> I believe about 80% would eventually pass and about 20% would continue to fail, more than enough to put many dive shops under. MV> Well, it is a big step for a most AOWDs to continue any further, so if 100 % is the number of people interested in more education, I hope your 80% are correct, however it may take more time to teach than what you want / should get paid for. I have met responsible divers with poor math skills, and Nobelprize suspects I do not want to be near water with. Absolutely. MV> Are you saying that a failure rate of more than 20 percent would put the economic situation of a dive shop at risk ? This offshoot of the thread was about putting trimix in the entry level course. I think that would chase too many people away and bury many dive shops and probably some agencies. MV> Uff, that 's hard stuff. If true , doesn't this reflect a fault in the general approach to diving , training , exercise; and last not least whose fault? I honestly do not know. The dividing lines between the types of diving aren't as clear as I would like. My intuition tells me that there is rec diving and tech diving and the change in expertise from level to level is not linear, nor in the same order in all respects. I have done rec dives with commercial and military divers and it is pretty obvious they are accustomed to being surface supplied and having a divemaster or other supervisor droning in their ears throughout the dive. I have to keep reminding them to check air pressure. Some of them have a hard time not crashing into the bottom for the simple reason that their job is to crash into the bottom and fix something and then move to the next job. "Mud puppies" is the term around here. On the job there is no viz for them to screw up, so they do not worry about it. It makes for interesting times on a silty wreck. Some hardly ever go deeper than about 40 feet on the job since there isn't anything they work on that deep. Doing a SCUBA dive with someone who nearly lives with a Draeger rebreather can be interesting too. ....and all of them kick my ass _every_damned_time on getting _anything_ accomplished underwater. How do the skill levels get sorted out? Pretty roughly I would imagine. For one thing, the 130 foot limit on rec diving would probably stay, although it should probably be 100 feet or so and the trimix would stay with the tech divers. The difference between diving 21% O2 / 79% N2 and 32% O2 / 68% N2 does not strike me as all that major for someone who can understand the risks. On this list most agree that tech diving is when there is a ceiling, either physical or virtual (deco). There was a time that Nitrox made it a tech dive, so division is not carved in stone.. DB> I know people who can't handle the math for Nitrox certification so they are eternal Nitrox students and only dive Nitrox with their instructor. MV>Sure. If everybody is content with it... Fine, but would we let them dive trimix under the same conditions? How about rebreathers? How big a bicycle do we let them get on before we make them take off the training wheels? :) DB>Why use helium when it isn't needed? MV> Yep. MV> If everybody would use it , be it after some certification or DIY,because they heard it was en vogue for less breathing resistance, no narcs, no fear of depth.... I wonder how fast the He resources would be screwed up. I don't think it would be all that big a deal. Look at how hard it is to get tech divers to use helium. DB> I think they would be pretty complex. The nitrogen and helium would be at different partial pressures for each mix (including Nitrox and air), so some allowance would have to be made for the differences. Mandating a minimum surface interval might cover this (like PADI does for Nitrox), but I don't think the other problems will be resolved any time soon. MV> But you addressed a way of to solve this, giving a worst case scenario to take into account , and coming out with some sort of one letter effective residual value, at the same time limiting the range of mix to a standardized one. I suppose. I have not crunched all the numbers on how that would work out. It might be simpler than it looks at first glance. _______________________________________________ Why pay for something you could get for free? NetZero provides FREE Internet Access and Email http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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