newbie diver intro and looking for some advice

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howdy and welcome from south Florida......good advice from those above...
 
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Tbone, what petrel GF setting is best for Rec diving that closely mirrors PADI RDP? Thanks.
 
can of worms, but I'll bite.

The GF equivalent is about 45/95, the low setting in the Recreational Nitrox Mode. It's not exact because the algorithms aren't the same, but it's close enough. Now, that doesn't mean you should dive that liberal, but to each his own. Remember that the PADI tables are designed for square profile diving, BUT there is a bit of an assumed fluff factor in there because your ascent might be a bit longer, or your safety stop might be a bit longer, you aren't actually at your max depth the whole time, etc. They're also in 10ft increments so that helps a bit. With a computer, they are factoring REAL TIME which means that you are actually going to ascend with 95% of theoretical tissue loading.

GF low doesn't really matter for recreational diving, but the GF high does. GUE uses Ratio Deco which isn't necessarily aggressive, but I wouldn't call it conservative. From what I understand, their "sanity check" is to use a GF of 30/85 when they are doing dive planning. This is a fairly common GF setting, as is 30/70. For recreational diving, I'd recommend to stay with the medium conservatism setting in the Petrel which is 40/85 for normal recreational dives. 30/70 is another common GF setting for planned decompression dives, but it does limit your NDL's significantly compared to x/85.
 
In Nitrox Recreational mode on the Petrel (which i assume is what you will use), you have three settings Low, Med, Hi for conservatism. You can't actually dial in specific GF's like you can in Tech mode, these are already preset by the manufacturer in Nitrox Rec mode. I would suggest diving on the Med setting which is 40/85 and see how you feel, then adjust accordingly.
 
Thanks for the replies and advice
for myself I'm not too concerned about AI and I'm not looking for a watch style specifically so I think I'm gonna go with the petrel.
And I think the back and forth communication with my daughter asking her her air supply etc will make the teamwork better anyways and force her to pay attention to me during the dice as I may be asking questions etc
 
the good thing is if you calculate SAC rates on every dive, you will be able to get a ballpark reading of her air by looking at your own....
 
hi thanks for the advice and replies.
Im fairly certain ill get the petrel 2 , just need to find a good price, lds is selling for 995 which is too much markup in my opinion
 
Welcome to ScubaBoard - hopefully you'll continue to join in the conversation!

Ray
 

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