Dive profiles

[Fishkiller]

I along with the help of my Aeris computer just viewed graphs of my dive profiles. I remember from the OW classes about not doing sawtooth dives. Most of my dives look as though I could open a wood cutting business.
I was wondering this time (gave up thinking head hurt to much)about REAL world dive planning and profiles. How many of you with your buddy go "lets spend 20 minutes at 50 feet 10 minutes at 40 feet then 5 minutes at 30 feet then saftey stop?" Or are they more like lets dive around the big rock look for eels(or your hand) then come back?

On my last dive the profile between 30 and 50 feet looks like a radio wave. We went around and through a large pile of rocks. By definition that was a Sawtooth profile. After the dive I logged it and checked it against the PADI wheel 53 feet 35 minutes.

 

[Walter]

Most dives don't require much planning. For them, my planning is minimal. I do make dives from time to time which have a higher pucker factor. For those dives I get quite detailed in my plans and put a great deal of thought into them. For the vast majority of my dives my plan consists of figuring my mix, staying out of the caution zone and multiple safety stops.

WWW™

 

[syruss32]

I'd be scared to see my profile. In the lake I dive you do a lot of that as there are dirt humps and rock piles to go up and over or around, so you cant really stay at given depths very easily.

 

[Bob]

Fishkiller,
Most of my dives are Ocean dives so there's not too much up and down. Like Walter says, planning is quite simple, depth of dive, the right mix, and checking what the expected BT will be at planned depth, just in case my new fangled computer croaks. I'll be diving Lake Ouachita :cold: in Arkansas in about two weeks, and it will be interesting to look at the profiles from these dives. I suspect they'll be as Fishkiller describes which I think are representative of the majority of lake dives.:tree:Bob

 

[Manogr]

My opinion is that in our OW dive we taught that since we rely only on the tables... The tables were designed and operate only with the assumption of square profiles..That's all...if you dive with tables you should go straight down and then straight to your safety stop...

Computers enable us to perform more complex profiles and go up and down all the time and of course experience allow some divers (not me yet...) to dive without planning and perform safe dives...

Manogr from still :sunny: Greece

 

[striking viking]

The world is not flat, and dive profiles are not square. I haven't seen the profile of any of my dives, but I would wager that not one of them has been square with the possible exception of a couple of dives to cars in canals-they were a lot closer to being directly down and up-but they too were probably not exactly square. I don't know the exact reason that the dive tables are for square profiles other than for legality reasons and that they are the easiest to profile to the masses. The benefit of using the dive tables set up for square profiles vs. diving "radio wave" profiles is that there is very little chance of you bending. The draw back of course is that you can't spend the amount of time on the bottom as a computer would allow. I think this is all basic info though, so I don't know if I answered anything you were looking for.

 

[Fishkiller]

I guess a follow up question would be just that, is there a outline of basic questions?