Another Tables vs. Computers Thread

[limeyx]

......

Here you have a highly motivated diver, reading advanced decompression theory, taking classes in preparation for technical diving, but my computer just annoys me. As is so often true in modern life, it's a piece of technology which was designed by a programmer to do what HE thought a piece of equipment should do -- instead, he created an interface which is tedious and complicated and requires too much effort from me to learn.

It might be well worth while to have classes in learning to use all the many facets of one's dive computer. The problem is that, as far as I can tell, you'd have to have twenty or thirty different classes, since the computers are so drastically different in how they operate and what they will do.

If you are really preparing for tech dives the GUE route, then I'd highly recommend carrying a bottom timer as well as your computer (use the computer for backup for now for safety) and using the Bottom timer and the MDL concepts/depth monitoring to run your dives.

If you don't start getting in that habit, then the classes will make it that much harder when you have to suddenly do it on deeper dives with more complex ascent profiles.


Hopefully at some point you'll be able to turn the computer into an (expensive) gauge and free yourself from the evil tyranny

(Now I have to go and find out how to get mine to stop beeping -- even in gauge mode -- every time I go below 130)

 

[lamont]

I've owned two computers. I have to admit, I haven't gone through the entire manual on either. Sometimes the computer makes noises I don't understand . . . my Mosquito was beeping at me at 120 feet the other day, and I don't know why, because I've never programmed an alarm into it for maximum depth.

If you were diving nitrox you probably exceeded the MOD. Suuntos figure a MOD of 1.4 ppO2 and adds one to your O2 %age (ie. if you key in 32% it bumps it up to 33% for you and limits you to 107).

Periodically, I get "slow" messages on dives where I haven't blown any stops.

all it takes is one moment where you exceed 27fpm and the "slow" marker will turn on in the dive log. could have been when you left max depth and the fast ascent was okay, but the computer won't care...

 

[MikeFerrara]

This discussion has been going on, that I know of, since 1988. It really has not changed at all. Read the argument when it started, at least the participants were somewhat more knowledgeable and much better prepared: Proceedings of the Dive Computer Workshop (1988)

For a good understanding of the relationship between a Dive Computer and tables look at the article on page 181. Also read what Jim Stewart had to say on page 207 and the Personal Perspectives starting on page 209.

Thanks for the reference. I've only had time to skim a few sections but I'll put a little more time in after I go get some work done.

I don't know that I would agree that nothing has changed. The computers themselves have changed since then as well as the models being used...ie models like RGBM. Our debate here might be a little different too in that we've been largely focused on the training of recreational divers.

Maybe the workshop discussed that too but I didn't get that far yet. In any case, students come in every flavor from "Tim the tin head" and "fredy follow the divemaster" to students who will be running the show befor long. To an extent recreational training has to address them all. We keep "minimizing" training to meet the needs of the resort diver...just give him what he needs to be safe. We let them bounce around the bottom and just follow the lights. The students who really want to learn the finer points of diving are told to take another class. Increasingly, however, that other class just doesn't exist unless they go into technical diving. The problem there, is not every one who wants to "know more" and be "more skilled" necessarily wants to go deeper, longer or into overheads. Even if they do, their recreational training often leaves them lacking the skills they even need to begin training. Just try to find real training in the basics outside of a cave or tech class. I can say for a fact that some percentage of divers will feel cheated once they find themselves posessing every certification the recreational (non-technical) community has to offer and find out that in reality they still suck in the water. Has recreational training left some guessing about how to use their computer? Maybe, but we've also left them guessing about how to control trim, do a proper ascent/descent, how to effectively function with a buddy or even figure out if they have enough gas to breath.

Why must we pre-suppose that every diver we train, only wants to learn the minimum and will be following a DM around at a resort in the Caribbean? Surely we have some of those but that doesn't fit every one. The question of whether or not to train using computers isn't the only issue or even the main issue but I think it's part of it. I know that amoung my own former students there are everything from vacation only divers, to local only divers (lakes and quarries) to some pretty accomplished cave and technical divers. Some go out and buy all the toys with the bells and wistles and some are still diving the local quarries with tables because that's all they can afford to do and others have done much more. IMO, not only do we not know what direction a new diver may go later on but at that point I don't think the student knows either. IMO, entry level training should provide a solid enough foundation as to have them ready for the next step they choose regardless of whether they're going to go left or right. I don't think we're doing that. As time goes on, I think we're doing it less and less.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Or better yet if diving with a computer requires so much instruction maybe we should require a computer certification?

I can do that... fifty bucks.... you want fries with that?
(But I'm afraid it'd include some math and even some (gasp!) tables - just as supporting underlying information, don'tchaknow)

Rick

 

[Thalassamania]

Computers have changed, models have changed, but the discussion has not.

At the the time of the workshop computers were some arcane piece of technology that almost nobody trusted (except we few who were using them actively, and that was few ... a computer was $400 to $600 back then, and that was real money!) and within a few months of the report they were an everyday piece of gear. But the same things that concerned us back then keep cropping up on the board, the biggest one being the idea that computers are just cartoons of tables but that divers, with no understanding, believe what the computer tells them.

 

[The Chairman]

But the same things that concerned us back then keep cropping up on the board, the biggest one being the idea that computers are just cartoons of tables but that divers, with no understanding, believe what the computer tells them.

Phobias die hard and egos often get in the way. Hopefully, this fallacy will one day be put to rest but that will only happen when reason and sanity prevail.

 

[lamont]

Phobias die hard and egos often get in the way. Hopefully, this fallacy will one day be put to rest but that will only happen when reason and sanity prevail.

Its not really a fallacy. All you have to do is wait around for the next near-accident involving OW divers going into deco on their computers without any advanced training to prove it true.

It is a fallacy to extend this kind of abuse of computers to a problem with computers in general, though. They're only a tool, its up to the user to abuse it or not.

 

[The Chairman]

Its not really a fallacy. All you have to do is wait around for the next near-accident involving OW divers going into deco on their computers without any advanced training to prove it true.

You say this like it doesn't happen to table divers. It happens to all those who EXCEED their training either by arrogance or inattention to details.

 

[H2Andy]

208 posts?

i think this thread just exceeded my training

 

[Scubakevdm]

208 posts?

i think this thread just exceeded my training

But its so grotesque I can't look away.