How often do you check your gauges?

[Storker]

When I had quite a few less dives than I have today, I was pretty thorough checking my run time, my computer's remaining NDL and my tank pressure rather often. And, since I have an AI computer, my remaining gas time. It might have been somewhere around every five to ten minutes unless I was deep; then it was more often.

I've noticed that these days, I check my instruments less often than I used to. I still feel that I'm in full control, and I don't get any unpleasant surprises (well, except that one time when I found myself at 40-50 bar at some depth, but that was a dive I started out with noticeably less gas in my tank than I'm used to. I still surfaced with some 20-30 bar/300-400 psi left in my 10L tank, though). My problem with this issue is that I'm not quite sure if it's is a sound development of my unconscious ability to track time and N2 loading, or if I'm becoming complacent and prone to normalization of deviance. I know that my experience level is just where people feel too sure and become too complacent, so I'd like to check with others.

My question is probably mostly directed towards those with more dives than I have, but anyone else is of course free to chime in. Am I A-OK, or am I becoming too complacent?

 

[Doby45]

Does 100-199 reflect your actual dive count? I would think not but that may get more people responding than ya want. With that being the case I am right around 150 and I still check mine with good frequency..

 

[arew+4]

I tend to end up being the defacto group leader in our family dive unit so I am looking at the compass, checking my own depth to gauge the kids, every few minutes. I tend to swim with the console in my hands, so frequent checking is not intrusive. I think the frequency should depend on depth and the stage of the dive, more frequent at the deepest/ beginning, and at the end.

 

[Akimbo]

Depends a lot on the dive stressors like depth, vis, sea states, familiarity with the site, and temperature. I may not look at them other than the compass when diving solo in less than 40' of water at a few spots down the street from home.

Edit: This is not a prescription for everyone, or hardly anyone, but generally reflects the reality of being human. I'm certified for Solo and practice free-assents from beyond recreational depths at least once a year... but I was trained for it.

 

[BoltSnap]

When I am diving outside teaching time, I check my gas pressure every few minutes. I have a wrist AI computer and I am usually holding a camera in my hands so I read the pressure easily and frequently by default just because the computer screen is pointing at my mask when I am taking pictures or just holding the camera housing in front of me.

When I am with students teaching, I check my pressure and the students' pressure constantly (by signals).

 

[Storker]

Does 100-199 reflect your actual dive count?

Yep.

 

[tbone1004]

it depends on how comfortable you are in the water, how stable your diving environments are, and how good your dive planning is.

less comfortable? check more often
new environment? check more often
great dive planning? check less often

i.e. you regularly do the roughly same dive profile, and have the dive plan done properly. Checking every 10-20 minutes is no problem.

A "regular" cave dive for me is at roughly 85 ft, and on a DPV. I know that my DPV sac is currently about .5 as I'm getting settled on it. I know that I'm roughly diving at 3.5ata, so I'm consuming about 1.75cfm. I am usually on a stage bottle, and have set a drop point of half plus two which gives me 33.5cf to play with. Theoretically that gives me 19 minutes. I will check my gauge when I get to depth *allows the tank to stabilize for temperature*, when my clock says 15 minutes, and then check again at 19 minutes *plus or minus a few minutes depending on where my gas consumption is*. If I'm in a new cave, not feeling quite as comfy as normal? I will check at 10 minutes, 15 mins, and then decide when I need to check again.

For the past two weeks I was teaching open water training. Average depth was 20ft, I was diving double 130's. I checked my gauge before I put the doubles on, and I checked them when I set them down. The students were limited with their AL80's, have a higher SAC rate than I do, and dive a few feet deeper than I do when in open water. I have the equivalent of 3 of their 80's, so there is no point in checking the gas until the end of the third dive outside of making sure that nothing was leaking either overnight or during the surface interval. I know that the equivalent of a full AL80 in double 130's is about 1000psi, so as long as I start the fourth dive with a bit over 1k, I'm going to be just fine. No need to worry.
The students are responsible for their own gas management, so I never ask them for theirs unless they have violated something quite badly and want to give them the butt pucker moment. Our dive plans and instructor positioning is set up to where we can always read one of the dive team members gauges as it is in front of the buddy's face while navigating. We try to teach them to dive independently and only act as their guardian angels if we need to intervene, so slight difference of teaching opinions there.

In cave diving, I also have a nifty advantage. On the exit, I don't check my gauges. On the stage bottles, I'm going to breathe them until basically empty. I dive Poseidon Jetstreams and when the tank pressure starts to get low, the regs will freeflow for a little bit after my inhalation until the IP locks back up. Once that happens, I know it's time to switch to the other tank. Not much different than using a J valve or one of the regs with the noise makers in there. I'll switch to the next stage, or onto backgas and finish my exit.
In sidemount I know roughly how long a third of my gas is going to last which is how often I switch. If before that I feel like I'm listing to one side or the other because of a gas imbalance, I switch.

With proper gas and dive planning, you should only be validating the gas that you have at certain intervals and adjusting accordingly, not planning your dive based on how much gas you have left.

 

[BoltSnap]

@tbone1004 How do you know how much time has passed for you to check your gauges and to actually know the time for checking?

 

[Storker]

it depends on how comfortable you are in the water, how stable your diving environments are, and how good your dive planning is.

less comfortable? check more often
new environment? check more often
great dive planning? check less often

i.e. you regularly do the roughly same dive profile, and have the dive plan done properly. Checking every 10-20 minutes is no problem.

That's what I'm thinking, too. However, being rather aware of the "normalization of deviance" issue, I thought I'd like to check with other divers.

 

[Doby45]

Yep.

Then is would say you have also gotten to where you check less because you pretty much dive the same conditions all the time. You get comfortable in that, which CAN lead to complacency but that does not mean you are currently complacent. The dives of yours that I have heard you describe seem to be cold water, hunter/gather type, not uber deep. So if you do the same type dive/profile over and over you know what you know, about that dive. I am 100% positive that if you were dropped off a boat in 130' of water on a wreck you would be checking your stuff far more frequently.