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Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 17:56:09 -0500
To: techdiver@aquanaut.com
From: Mike Rodriguez <mikey@ma*.co*>
Subject: RE: Underwater timers.
At 07:40 PM 3/9/2001 -0500, Art.Paltz@R2*.CO* wrote:

Hello Art,

>My feeling is that with all the importance put on deep stops that if you are
>going to do them, you need to do them correctly and accurately.  If a dive
>computer did seconds then we would not have this problem.  My philosophy is
>that if the table calls for a 1 minute deep stop, you should do exactly
>that, 1 minute, no more, no less.

Well, I'm going to say one last thing on this topic, then I'm gonna
drop it.  If you don't believe I'm correct, well, then we'll leave
it at that.  Before you take my word for any of this, keep in mind
that I do decompression dives *every weekend*, usually both days;
some of these dives go well beyond 400 feet.  And I've *never* been
to a recompression chamber.

---

Timing deco to the second is *totally* unnecessary.  It does nothing
whatever to reduce your chances of DCS.  In fact, people who do a
lot of deco diving can do the deco without tables.  I never follow
a table (though I carry one) when I dive; instead, I know the run-time
from experience and just "fit" a curve to the total run-time.  It's
all approximate.  If you know the run-time, anyone can do this.  I
assure you nobody needs to time deco stops to the second.

Saying something like "The table says one minute, so I'm going to do
exactly one minute" would only make sense if you could run a profile
on three programs and get the same result each time.  The reality is
that you'll end up with wildly varying stop times yet all of them
get you out of the water unbent.

Let me ask you something.  Let's say that, for redundancy, you took
two tables with you on a dive.  The tables were generated using
two different programs and therefore have significantly differing
stop times.  Now, when you get to your 30 foot stop and see one
table several minutes different from the other table, which one
should you use to time the stop to the second by?  Since the tables
both get you out of the water unbent and since they differ by several
*minutes*, deciding which one you should stick to down to the second
is rendered pretty much irrelevant as are the seconds ticking off
on your stopwatch.

Hope this makes sense...

-Mike Rodriguez
<mikey@mi*.ne*>
http://www.mikey.net/scuba
Pn(x) = (1/(2^n)n!)[d/dx]^n(x^2 - 1)^n

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