Basic signs for imperial divers

[mislav]

I live in a metric rec diving world, so to me - one finger equals ten bars, closed fist fifty and "time out" sign goes for half tank or hundred bar.

What do the divers who use psi rather than bar use?

 

[TheTrickster]

I'm too a metre diver, I find it easy to follow! Like you said 10 bar is a finger, 50bar a fist, etc...

I'm too interested in what the psi lot use. Also over here we rate tanks in ltrs, like a 12ltr tank, 15ltr, 17ltr, a twin set of 12ltrs etc, yet all I see here is AL80s, AL100s

 

[dsteding]

It depends . . .

I know/see/use at least two methods for signalling pressure.

The first it to flash groups of five to get within 500 psi of your pressure, then you flash the remaining 100s of psi:

2700 psi would be 5-5-5-5-5-2.

The second, and my preferred method, is to flash the first and second digits of your pressure. To do this, 1-5 are fingers up, and 6-9 are fingers to the side (minus 5, so six is one finger sideways, seven is two fingers sideways, eight is three fingers sideways and nine is four fingers sideways).

So, 2700 would be two fingers up (the 2) and then 2 fingers to the side (the 7).

Another example: 1900 would be one finger up (1000) and four fingers to the side (900).

Make sense? I like the second method better because flashing a bunch of fives is easily lost track of if you miss one.

 

[jeraldjcook]

http://www.advanceddivermagazine.com/FreePDFs/Onehandnumbering.pdf

Works well, just communicate your psi to nearest 100.

Same method as dsteding said, but a diagrahm.

 

[TheTrickster]

I'm gonna get flamed for this, but it looks to me the bar way is much simplier to understand from a beginners point of view, however I'm sure after a few trys the psi way would be simple to use

 

[jiveturkey]

I use metric too but since I came back to Canada, I'm all messed up. People look at my gauges and give me the wide eye. Not that it really matters though because the water is so cold we can't use gloves anyway. Kind of hard to figure out what's going on inside my buddy's neoprene mitts.

 

[Lamnid]

that sounds waaaaay too complicated! lol. good luck psi guys one day i hope to overcome my ignorance.

 

[Ber Rabbit]

There are several different sets of signs used by different divers. The basic one we use is 1 finger=100psi, so the open hand=500 psi. Using this method when you have 2000psi you look at your buddy, point to your gauge and open and close your hand 4 times (500, 1000, 1500, 2000). Kind of looks like you're repeatedly telling them to "stop."

Another version of this would be to hold up 2 fingers then "knock" with your fist 3 times to indicate zero's. It looks like "2, knock, knock, knock" if you had 2500psi you would see 2 fingers held up then 5 fingers held up then 2 "knocks' for the zeros. It can get a little complicated There are other ways to indicate the same thing so it's always best to review your pressure signals with your buddy. His 700psi may look like 520psi to you depending on which system you are using.

When my husband and I are diving together we use a "me too" sign since we often have the same pressure. We give our own air pressure before asking for our buddy's so he would say 1500psi and I would point to myself then show two fingers to him= "me too."
Ber :lilbunny:

 

[edjohnson66]

I have seen/used two other methods

one is to signal up to five by using fingers, but for numbers over 5 flip the hand back around where 7 would be 5 fingers one direction, flip the hand around and show two fingers.

The other is two show 1 thru 5 as fingers up then thumb and pointing finger (dont know the real term) would be six, thumb middle finger is 7 and so forth

 

[jeraldjcook]

We measure our tanks in cubic feet. AL80 = 80 cubic feet. You silly metric people.