Dive Tables - anyone have digital copies?

[tursiops]

1. this is a very important part of training: It is very possible to get OW certification without any training in tables. The focus today is more on the use of computers to plan and execute dives.

2. and understanding: Understanding what? Decompression theory? Because tables were traditionally taught along with decompression theory, many people have the mistaken impression that understanding tables is an essential part of understanding decompression theory. In reality, in instruction, OW students need to understand two different concepts:

a. How nitrogen builds in the body during the dive, and why it needs to be released during ascent.​

b. How to plan dives and ascents to make sure nitrogen is properly released. This can be taught using tables or computers or both.​

My wife used to each OW, lots of female students. She taught the deco concept as being like charging purchases on a credit card; the amount owed increases with depth and time, and you can pay it off only at a certain rate...not tto slow or the penalties accrue, and not tto fast because of DCS. The tables helped to visualize the increasing debt, and the payoff schedule. Seemed to work.....I don't think using a computer would have been as visual. Some people learn better with the visual aids.

 

[lizardland]

As a cave diver a have a dive table from a different agency then PADI (can’t remember what organization) that is printed in a soft plastic sheet that is folded up and in the back of my wet notes book. Been there for perhaps 10 years, and I have never taken it out for use underwater. Good for me to have it incase my Shearwater failed and I could reference it. I’m not sure why a recreational diver would need one?

I have the same one (probably), also folded up in my wetnotes. Printed on a sheet of yellow flexible plastic? I can't remember who made them. IANTD? NACD? Something like that. If I remember right you could get a yellow set for air or the green set for nitrox.

To be honest I'd totally forgotten about them until you mentioned it, it's been so long since I looked at them.

 

[lizardland]

It's not even a matter of losing them. PADI's e-learning app for Open Water certification has education segments and exams for using dive tables.

The weird thing is, they do not provide any obvious way for (a mobile learner at least) to reference their dive tables while doing the calculations for the exams. They warn that if you exit prematurely that you'll get a zero on the attempt but only provide the tables in different section of the app.

A catch-22 that made me go searching for bootlegged PADI tables too.

Fair enough, I did my training when they came on a plastic slate wrapped in the same pack as the OW manual. That is a particularly silly way of doing it. You'd think someone would've test driven the exam before releasing it.

Think yourself lucky you will never have to experience The Wheel. A lot of effort went into making something that was so complicated and so fraught with opportunities to make errors. It was a clever bit of engineering designed by people who had clearly never met the average diver or heard of human factors.

 

[sea_ledford]

Do you plan your dives, and/or do repetitive dives? Tables allow that, as do some computers. That is how they are useful, not during a dive. Nothing to do with recreational or not.

What computers allow for planning of multiple dives? I'm trying to modernize some of my classes, and tables are on the chopping block. But I can't find anything that will replace them for multi dive planning.
A phone app would be even better! I mean NDL software, not deco planning, there are loads of those. I suspect there aren't any because of all these proprietary issues, and if there is one it'll be based on Navy tables (which would be fine).

 

[TravisD]

They are hard to find because nobody has used tables for the past 15 years. I don't understand what you are trying to do but I would try to reframe it and use planning software instead.

Looks like the OP is building an App and wants to incorporate the tables into that somehow. That would explain looking for something without copyright restrictions.

Thread 'Mods/Owners - can I request beta testers for app I am creating?'

Today at 4:52 AM

As per the title - I am in the process of building an app for scuba divers around logging, planning etc and would love to have some testers who are all over the skills range when diving.

Could I please ask on the forum for some users? If yes, could you advise where is best to place this request?

• Saffadiver
• Replies: 1
• Forum: Help using ScubaBoard... aka Site Support

 

[tursiops]

Looks like the OP is building an App and wants to incorporate the tables into that somehow. That would explain looking for something without copyright restrictions.

Thread 'Mods/Owners - can I request beta testers for app I am creating?'

Today at 4:52 AM

As per the title - I am in the process of building an app for scuba divers around logging, planning etc and would love to have some testers who are all over the skills range when diving.

Could I please ask on the forum for some users? If yes, could you advise where is best to place this request?

• Saffadiver
• Replies: 1
• Forum: Help using ScubaBoard... aka Site Support

That would explain a lot!

There is an available on-line version of the PADI Electronic RDP Multi-Level (eRDPml) which has the advantages of switchable Imperial-Metric units, 5 ft increments (rather than 10) and multi-level capability (like the PADI Wheel). It does NOT have EANx/Nitrox capability; one has to use Equivalent Air Depth tables for that.

.::Electronic Recreational Dive Planner - eRDPML::.

 

[boulderjohn]

My wife used to each OW, lots of female students. She taught the deco concept as being like charging purchases on a credit card; the amount owed increases with depth and time, and you can pay it off only at a certain rate...not tto slow or the penalties accrue, and not tto fast because of DCS. The tables helped to visualize the increasing debt, and the payoff schedule. Seemed to work.....I don't think using a computer would have been as visual. Some people learn better with the visual aids.

1. They are still two different concepts.

2. When my shop switched to the computer version of the PADI course, the PADI computer simulator did the same thing, except better. You had a visual of how nitrogen loading changes with depth, both descending and ascending, and how the computer tracks it.

 

[boulderjohn]

Think yourself lucky you will never have to experience The Wheel. A lot of effort went into making something that was so complicated and so fraught with opportunities to make errors. It was a clever bit of engineering designed by people who had clearly never met the average diver or heard of human factors.

The wheel was created at the same time as the RDP, and the impetus for both was the same. An average diver was frustrated by the limits the US Navy tables put on his diving--the inability to plan for multilevel dives and the extremely long surface intervals for a 2-tank dive. The wheel would have been a very welcome and useful tool if it were not for the fact that it was created about the same time as the introduction of dive computers.

I did hate the wheel and the fact that I had to learn it when I became a professional. I had bought my first computer years before, after my first dive trip showed me how worthless the tables were. (Fellow divers told me they made a reasonably good Frisbee.)

 

[tursiops]

The wheel was created at the same time as the RDP, and the impetus for both was the same. An average diver was frustrated by the limits the US Navy tables put on his diving--the inability to plan for multilevel dives and the extremely long surface intervals for a 2-tank dive. The wheel would have been a very welcome and useful tool if it were not for the fact that it was created about the same time as the introduction of dive computers.

I did hate the wheel and the fact that I had to learn it when I became a professional. I had bought my first computer years before, after my first dive trip showed me how worthless the tables were. (Fellow divers told me they made a reasonably good Frisbee.)

LOL. I'm thinking your bad experience (that's you've described many times) with a table after your first post-cert dives when you followed a guide and did a multi-level dive and could not reproduce it on a table; it was a frustrating experience you haven't gotten over!
Tables worked fine for many years; they still work fine for certain dives. Computers are more capable, but how many people -- on dive boats and ScubaBoard -- have no clue how to use their computer? It may be more capable, but it is demonstrably not a panacea. (Not a pancreas, as my brother-inlaw would say.)

 

[TravisD]

Tables worked fine for many years; they still work fine for certain dives. Computers are more capable, but how many people -- on dive boats and ScubaBoard -- have no clue how to use their computer? It may be more capable, but it is demonstrably not a panacea. (Not a pancreas, as my brother-inlaw would say.)

"worked" and "work" here are doing a lot of heavy lifting here I'd say. In the sense that the tables are going to give a pretty conservative profile, but at the expense of limited dive time, especially when it comes to repetitive dives.

I would guest that the typical dive boat diver probably knows just enough about how to 'use' their computer to keep them (mostly) out of danger, which to some extent is the point. If they know how to read and understand their NDL time, and ascent rate, and surface interval, they're not doing as badly as we might think.

At the other end of the spectrum are the gear-heads who've actually read the manual, and know how to tweek settings to work better for them, and have a better understanding of what the blinking and beeping box on their wrist is telling them. Possibly they're using the data post-dive to make better decisions such as bringing more gas, or switching to Nitrox?

Does that leave a gap in the middle though who might know enough to be actually more dangerous? Are they adjusting settings to give them more dive time without considering other factors? Riding NDL's right to the limit, possibly creating gas planning challenges?

Wow we're way off the original topic here