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Last season we dived several deep wrecks off of the Virginia coast, including the German Light cruiser Frankfurt in 420'. Ken Clayton and Harvey Storck used a 21% O2 and 79% neon mix as an intermediate decompression gas. Dr. Hamilton worked out the first schedule but it was apparently based on crude neon, which I am told can contain up to 25% helium, rather than pure neon. Consequently, the decompression times were prohibitively long. They ended up treating neon as if it were nitrogen. We made the dives, Ken and Harvey used their neon mix from 200-30', the rest of us used EANx 36 from 110' - 30'. All of us switched to O2 at the 20' stop. Ken and Harvey's decompression time was shorter and neither developed any DCS problems. However, at $3.42 per cf, the reduced decompression could hardly justify the cost. In this case PRAXAIR INC. donated 600cf of pure neon (commercial value of approximately $2,000) to Ken and Harvey to experiment with. Although the outcome of a few dives hardly forms a database where one can make reasonable assumptions, in their case it worked. Obviously, the cost will limit its use. Mike Boring
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