Charlie99:
Perhaps the original poster of that comment should explain, since it's not clear to me why one "the method requires an understanding of both dissolved gas and bubble mechanics".
Slow ascents and deep stops precede WKPP and DIR.
Deep stops are easily generated using dissolved gas models with a minor tweak. Indeed, until the latest revision, GUE's Decoplanner decompression planning program was a classic dissolved gas model, with no bubble/dual phase model or calculations anywhere in the program. By "DIR Model" are you referring to Buhlmann algorithm with gradient factors?
It's interesting how posters will alternately say "super simple, easy to do" and "very complicated, must understand deco theory in depth, should only do this after taking a class on it".
Do you REALLY understand the depth averaging method and why it works? Do you really understand how bubble mechanics relate to depth averaging?
If you don't, then perhaps when using it you are doing "trust me" dives.
We are mixing two concepts here:
1) Figure out how much deco you need to do (this is where depth averaging comes into it)
2) figure out the required deco shape (nothing to do with depth averaging)
for (1) I am comfortable with all the dives I do and the gases I choose.
It might come as a surprise but even though GUE's deco planner S/w is a fairly standard model, it's not necessarily the case that those exact profiles are what are dived (which I've said before in many posts in other threads).
I cannot comment on what was taught in other classes, but I do not dive any table that comes from deco planner or otherwise.
I don't rember saying you need a Phd in deo theory to apply it -- in fact, you seem to understand many of the models better than I, including all the compartment models etc.
There's also an interesting issue. You can make things as complex as you want on land because you have plenty of time and resources to figure out complex problems (and you aren't narcd
But in water you need something simple, reliable and flexible. Thinking about 16 compartments in water is not practical for most of us.
The GUE ascent profile goes something like this (depending on how you do it)
This is for deco dives only -- rec dives are actually a subset of this, which you can actually derive from the ratio deco pdf file.
1) generate an RGBM or VPM ascent profile (with particular conservatism settings)
2) Add in deep stops manually based on 0.8 ATA of depth, and 0.65 ATA of depth (these are essentially the deep stops used by WKPP and depend on bottom times)
3) decide what deco gases you are going to use (since the initial table is planned on using air as deco gas).
4) Add in stops that let you take advantage of the "Oxygen window" (where the deco gas has a PPo2 close to 1.6) -- these stops are "shaped" like an S-curve, not an exponential RGBM curve etc.
5) add in the shallow stops -- essentially the same as RGBM/VPM
so no, it's not magic, it's not hard, but it's not something that a standard deco planner seems to do right now.
And no, I do not understand down to the molecular level how bubbles work in my body and I would posit that probably no one knows for sure (if people really 100% knew this stuff, no one need ever get bent).
The methods I follow are used regularly by hundreds of people (ok, I know it's orders of magnitude less than the computer/table folks) on dives that I cannot even contemplate doing. If I am going to do a "trust me" dive (which to an extent every single dive anyone ever does is), then the people I want to trust are doing 400 minute bottome times at 275 feet. And not just once, but every weekend.
