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Hi George and others,

I gotta admit, I just read the IANTD Deep Air Manual and wondered to
myself - why did they waste the paper?  It's not even good enough for
uses that George has for his rags.  I mean - *really useless, content
free*.  I've never seen a manual that has 2/3 of it's space dedicated
for "students notes"!!!  After all, just how much lecturing goes on in
this class, I could fit my entire semester of human biology in the
free space in this book.  I guess that they figure they had to make it
thick enough to justify the $30 for it.  Maybe they should include
some McDonalds coupons or something.

Next on the reading list are the Nitrox and Tech Nitrox Manuals.  I
seriously doubt that I'll learn anything there either, but I'll
read'em some night when I can't get to sleep so I can at least have
amunition to fire at'em - hey, it's only 3:30 am now !!!

I also confess that I was intrigued by "deep air" - yea - sounds real
neat, but, why bother, there's LOTS of good reasons for keeping the
AED at or below 130 AND keeping the PPO2 down around 1.3-1.4, well
below the old limits .  People here have to open up their ears and
listen (before knocking what they're hearing), because what you're
mostly hearing is the voice of experience.  It's almost like the
resentful teenage son - eventually he realizes that most if not all of
what his parents told him was really true!

George once said to me...

> Deep air. You get used to the narcosis so you don't alwasy notice
>it, but you are just as impaired - there is no acclimation. A good eye
>opener is when we jump back to air at 190 for deco, and about two
>minutes later the slam sets in, but when we travel down on air in a
>cave dive, we never notice.

I'm not discounting not noticing the narcosis on deep air, but, I have
a question.  Is there any chance that the gas switch (e.g. from mix to
air like you mentioned at 190) itself is actually partly to blame for
the (possibly excessive) narcosis?  I have heard of this possibility
before and would like your (and other knowledgable mix divers)
opinion/observations on this.

-Carl-

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