Orange / Yellow DSMBs - and their use as signals in Tech Dives?

[AndrewA]

I have always used the red/orange smb for routine and yellow for "trouble" convention, having been trained by British instructors.(if possible I attach a slate/wet note to the yellow smb with a message to the surface cover) I also use the deployment of a yellow smb up the orange smb line to indicate that I require extra deco gas.( I leave a rig on the boat) As there is no universal standard it is important to make sure that the boat/back up team know what any signal means during the dive brief.

 

[k ellis]

We grew up with: hospital 'code red' meaning fire, then there are brake lights, road flares, police lights, terrorist threat color code, finances in the red, the Cold War 'red phone'.

In the southern part of the country at least color coding has been around for emergency vehicles for years. Blue lights represent police vehicles, Red lights represent fire vehicles, red and clear represent ambulance, yellow denotes road side assitance vehicles and green denoted municiple vehicles.

The problem with color coding they found right off was that back in the day when police cars ran all red and had a speaker in the middle of the lights drunks tried to run in between the flashing lights which is why they came up with red and blue lights because they found most police stops occured on the right side of the road so they placed blue on the right side of the car. In the theory blue some how detered drunk drivers and tended to push them away. (Dont ask) But on to my point being behind this every one in this country knows what emergency lights are yet 90 percent of the people fail to give them the respect they are intended to receive.

I dont think color coding smbs would prove any more effective. It would be inevitable you shoot an emergency color up and everyone on the boat would be scratching their heads wondering why in the world someone would launch an smb.

Its possible it would make some diffrence so long as the dive masters and crew knew I guess but hey we all have either watched or heard of the movie "Open water" And saw how even a professional team can mess things up.

 

[DevonDiver]

It's been mentioned earlier in the thread, but a potential solution to a lack of awareness/communication/education about the color coding system would be to put the letters "S O S" or "H E L P" on the top of the DSMB.

 

[k ellis]

It's been mentioned earlier in the thread, but a potential solution to a lack of awareness/communication/education about the color coding system would be to put the letters "S O S" or "H E L P" on the top of the DSMB.

Correct. It would be the easiest and most economical way to do it. Some SMBS even come with the wording "Emergency" wrote on them.

 

[joystershell]

Why?

Any color works as long as all parties involved are aware of the meaning.

If your dive plan depends upon some unknown stranger responding to your bag, that's when I'd suggest reconsidering the dive plan.

And that was exactly what we meant. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

 

[lowviz]

It's been mentioned earlier in the thread, but a potential solution to a lack of awareness/communication/education about the color coding system would be to put the letters "S O S" or "H E L P" on the top of the DSMB.

I agree. I think that in the US, lettering removes the ambiguity as it takes precedence over color. Is this true in other countries?

 

[Charlie99]

Slightly off topic ..... the best labeling I've seen of a DSMB was the one with the label "JIM", with a helpful arrow pointing downwards for those that couldn't figure out where Jim was.

His inspiration was probably those dive floats with the label "Diver Below". It does help clueless boaters figure out the purpose of the pretty red float with a flag.

 

[String]

"I'v just invented a dive flag"
"Doesn't everyone use the Alpha flag for that all ready"
"We don't care about international conventions, we want one of our own"
"But it doesn't meet the 1st rule of signal flags"
"I just told ya, we don't care about conventions"

At marine navigation lighting to that list too.

IALA is red-to-port when entering a channel. Except the US chooses red-to-port when LEAVING a channel.

 

[rjack321]

IALA is red-to-port when entering a channel. Except the US chooses red-to-port when LEAVING a channel.

IALA region B is:
North and South America
Japan
both Koreas
Philippines

Bit more of the world than just those wanky right side driving Yanks

 

[Kern]

IALA region B is:
North and South America
Japan
both Koreas
Philippines

Bit more of the world than just those wanky right side driving Yanks

Another example of Yanky imperialism! Obviously perpetrated by a cabal of WASP super elites!! Probably members of the Illuminate!!!