Guess who's a newbie TRIMIX diver?!? (and sorta Lake Travis report of 8/13)

[Daylonious]

Okay, I admit, it's me.

Did my trimix class this week at Lake Travis - I walked the walk, and talked the donald duck talk.

Picture this - the last dive for the class -

• Windy Point
• 3mm wetsuit (my instructor had me convinced that the lake had "turned" and it would be warm - obviously some sort of private instructor joke at my expense)
• I'm wearing double 108's, with two 40cf decos under each arm
• 26/17 trimix, 50% and 80% for deco
• 150' to the bottom of the bouy (it might've been deeper, we called it at 142)
• Viz was approx 24 inches
• My fellow classmate had a 10 watt HID and it could go about 3 feet.
• I had a LED Princeton Tec light - it could go about 10 inches
• It was dark.
• It was cold (58 degrees)
• So basically it's me and him, going down the bouy line, 3 feet apart, with only our lights between us. It's getting darker, and colder, and darker, and colder...

So we do the dive, do the valve drills, shoot the bags, switch the gasses, etc.

I surface and remark, "That was cold, dark, and utterly miserable..."

My instructor says, "But keep in mind, because of the helium, you were acutely aware and clear headed about how cold, dark and miserable it actually was..."

Indeed, he was right.

I remembered every f'n minute of how absolutely miserable I was the entire time I was down there. In retrospect, doing the dive on air and getting narced might not have been so bad.....

Gee, what fun! (LOL!)

Something random to admit tho, it was actually kind of a cool feeling to be doing the dive on trimix, with deco bottles and knowing that if I breathed the 80% mix any deeper than 35 feet, I could have gone into a seizure and died.

Anyone else get what I mean?

I was looking at my depth gauge and thinking "After this point, this bottle under my arm could kill me if I misuse it...okay at PPo2 1.4 I have a MOD of xxx at 1.6 I have a depth of yyyy..so that gives me a buffer of zzz feet..."

Maybe it was the helium, not sure how to describe it, but I was consciously aware that I had crossed a line in my diving, and that NOW I was more aware that my diving outcome had much less leeway and was directly tied to me executing my dive plan correctly, switching gases at the right depths, etc...

Because of the class, I'm more conscious of the gases we use and the effects they have - I think it's made me more serious, focused, and "aware" of the dives I will do in the future.

Comments?

D.

p.s. why is helium so stupidly expensive?!?

 

[Dive-aholic]

My first training trimix dive still had me feeling narced, but I went to 180' in a cave after swimming a ways to get there. My last training trimix dive was in another cave, one I had gone into on air, although not very far. I was still a little narced, but not as much. And there was a definite difference in the cave on trimix v. on air. On air it seemed like a very small cave with little room to move around. On trimix I could drive a truck through it. The 3 of us were swimming along side by side at one point. Trimix is good.

Oh, and it's so expensive because it's a limited supply...and getting more limited.

 

[Mack Diver]

Congrats Daylon. I wish you guys would have stopped by the shop while you were here. I'm still trying to finish my Adv. Nitrox class, but looking towards my Trimix future.

There is a Yahoo group for tech divers that dive Lake Travis. I'll send you the link.

HE is so ********** expensive because its brought to you by the same folks that give you go juice for your car. If we could convince all the kids and auto dealerships that floating balloons are bad, we could maybe get the price down. Actually, there is a virtually limitless supply of HE. The bad news is that it is many miles away from earth, so we cannot get to it yet.

 

[jimdiverman]

HE is so ********** expensive because its brought to you by the same folks that give you go juice for your car. If we could convince all the kids and auto dealerships that floating balloons are bad, we could maybe get the price down. Actually, there is a virtually limitless supply of HE. The bad news is that it is many miles away from earth, so we cannot get to it yet.

I understand they also use Helium in MRI units, and those have proliferated the planet in the last 10 years. Also there are only 2 main repositories of the stuff left over from WWI, one is somewhere up near Amarillo, TX and the other is somewhere in Russia. There are no production plants producing Helium that I know of. Yes, it is found in the atmosphere, and yes, it is floating at the top of it.

Oh,and congrats. Daylonius, on your trimix cert.

 

[texdiveguy]

Congrats on your program completion......now can you do something for us fellow 'mix' divers regarding the He prices!!!

 

[FIXXERVI6]

.......

26/17 trimix, 50% and 80% for deco


.........

Why 26/17?

Why 80%?

What software / algorithm did you use?

If you haven't already you may want to consider looking at GUE standard mixes vs "best mix". Its easier to blend because you can just top pure He with banked 32%, works out as good deco mixes when you start pulling deeper dives, and works out well in a team that are all standard mix divers.

I'm suprised the instructor picked 50 and 80, if you look at what taking 80% along with 50% got you it wasn't much. Since Travis is a lake heavy seas are not an issue so my preference is 100% but for travis diving a single 50% is the way to go, less bottles less mixing and gets you out plenty fast.

Try carrying your bottles on your left only, espeically with two 40's, keeps the right side clean for long hose deployment. If you don't "layer" properly it is very easy to trap your long hose by carrying bottles on your right. Only after I'm at a point where I'm carrying 3 80's or more do I start hanging stuff on the right and even then you have to watch your hoses, usually after i hang something on the right I"ll deploy my hose right then to see if its hung up, this is why DIR says only on the left, it can and will interfere with your long hose deployment.

Part of the cost of the helium is the purity your running, (UHP I assume) while all helium comes from the same "tap" the differnece is they pull a vacume on the UHP cylinders vs the other cylinders. I've seen the prices go up and down throughout the year, I usually pay the most in summer. Some say the reason prices will spike is a drop in natural gas production - where they get most helium - during the hot months less demand so less natural gass is produced, therefore less helium.

The worst part of it all is the Helium capital of the world is right here in Texas but we sure don't get it cheaper than anyone else, I'm told its government regulated and that we (U.S) are currently selling large quantities overseas driving up our domestic prices.

 

[Teknadv3x]

• 3mm wetsuit (my instructor had me convinced that the lake had "turned" and it would be warm - obviously some sort of private instructor joke at my expense)
• I'm wearing double 108's, with two 40cf decos under each arm
• 26/17 trimix, 50% and 80% for deco
• 150' to the bottom of the bouy (it might've been deeper, we called it at 142)
• Viz was approx 24 inches
  
  
  Comments? QUOTE]
  
  Let me ask you a what If?
  What if you went to add some gas to your wing and the wing elbow assembly became dislodged and ALL the gas escaped from your wing. You mentioned you had 108s + 2-40s and was wearing a 3mm wetsuit, not sure what kind of BP, Stainless I presume. Needless to say you would be quite Negative and you had no Drysuit on to create positive bouyancy. What would be your course of action?
  
  
  
  
  Dave

 

[Dive-aholic]

...if you look at what taking 80% along with 50% got you it wasn't much. Since Travis is a lake heavy seas are not an issue so my preference is 100% but for travis diving a single 50% is the way to go, less bottles less mixing and gets you out plenty fast.

Part of the standards require 2 deco mixes. We had to bring along a bottle of 32% to satisfy the standards (much easier to get than mixing something else). It didn't do anything for our deco other than give us practice on multiple gas switches. Our main deco gas was 100%.

The worst part of it all is the Helium capital of the world is right here in Texas but we sure don't get it cheaper than anyone else, I'm told its government regulated and that we (U.S) are currently selling large quantities overseas driving up our domestic prices.

Actually, the worst part is that right in the middle of oil country (Midland/Odessa) is where you'll find the highest gas prices in Texas. The closer to DFW you get, the lower the price of gas. Figure that one out!!!

 

[NadMat]

• 3mm wetsuit (my instructor had me convinced that the lake had "turned" and it would be warm - obviously some sort of private instructor joke at my expense)
• I'm wearing double 108's, with two 40cf decos under each arm
• 26/17 trimix, 50% and 80% for deco
• 150' to the bottom of the bouy (it might've been deeper, we called it at 142)
• Viz was approx 24 inches
  
  
  Comments? QUOTE]
  
  Let me ask you a what If?
  What if you went to add some gas to your wing and the wing elbow assembly became dislodged and ALL the gas escaped from your wing. You mentioned you had 108s + 2-40s and was wearing a 3mm wetsuit, not sure what kind of BP, Stainless I presume. Needless to say you would be quite Negative and you had no Drysuit on to create positive bouyancy. What would be your course of action?
  
  
  
  
  Dave

• 
  
  I believe he would have deployed his lift bag as his b/u buoyancy device (just a guess, I am neither a trimix diver or a drysuit diver although I dive around a few)

 

[wedivebc]

After wading through all that thread on deep air you came to a decision and followed through with it. Good on ya.