I'm afraid trusting a computer to come up with a change of plan 33 feet deeper than my original is a bit away for me. I always plan for the deepest I might go and bring 3 run times. With my dives I'd have to dig a hole to get deeper than the plan. Unless I actually left the wreck I'd be shallower than the plan so I'm looking forward to tomorrow's dive on the Cunard Liner Folia, with the computer plotting actual depth. Thanks Wibble.
We come from different generations of divers. My mere 10 year diving career has very much been on the shoulders of giants where the techniques, training, equipment, algorithms and computers are well sorted before I started.
I’m well capable of doing a table planning exercise. For NDL dives the tables are very simple, not so with decompression diving.
For planning I use software such as MultiDeco. This makes decompression dive planning very easy.
I was taught to write a dive profile on a slate. Actually it was write 4 profiles: target, +3m/10ft, +5mins, +both. That is incredibly tedious and time consuming.
One very quickly learns to trust GOOD computers (e.g. Shearwater) as they reliably perform the real-time decompression calculations. Once relying on the computer you now need two for resilience.
Once that line has been crossed, planning becomes much simpler. It’s effectively calculating the maximum times and gasses required for a specific depth — the absolute maximum depth for that dive. You jump in knowing those maxima and run the dive off the computer.
This simplifies the entire dive giving you the freedom to enjoy it with a minimum of fuss.
I’ve a trip to Malin shortly (a world class dive site on the north-west of Ireland). Planning will be for max depth of 75m/250ft and max runtime of 3 hours on a rebreather. All dives pretty much regardless of depth will use that same plan but will be executed using the computer (effectively referring to the TTS). Little extra thought required.