PADI tables finally going away?

[Peter Guy]

John B wrote:

they need to be replaced with a planning tool that lets you work out the same types of scenarios

Well, why don't we all just use minimum deco schedules and be done with it! It works, its easy and it doesn't require ANYTHING other than your mind (and a bottom timer).

 

[Kingpatzer]

We're off on a tangent because the only PDC that even remotely comes close to being able download dive profiles to a proper dive planning program is an ungodly expensive tech computer that downloads to tool that tech divers use to cut custom tables.

We don't need to download to a PC.

My Gekko - which is about as cheap a computer as one can get, is perfectly adequate for doing recreational dive planning.

As I said earlier (repeatedly) if the tables are going to go away, they need to be replaced with a planning tool that lets you work out the same types of scenarios:

"Based on the dive I just finished, if my SI is 30 minutes and my next dive is to 80'..."

My Gekko allows me to see what my NDL will be for any given depth before I splash. I've yet to find a recreational dive situation where that wasn't sufficient.

 

[The Chairman]

John B wrote
Pray tell JB, does not the "user interface" of most tables "suck" and that is why they aren't used? Methinks you've made THE point of why "teaching tables" will fade away.

Bravo!

 

[Atom]

As I said earlier (repeatedly) if the tables are going to go away, they need to be replaced with a planning tool that lets you work out the same types of scenarios:

"Based on the dive I just finished, if my SI is 30 minutes and my next dive is to 80'..."

Otherwise its not dive planning, it's flying the NDL.

I agree that the ability to easily project into the future is good but..... dive tables have already been replaced by dive computers, or DMs with dive computers. That's the reality, we can argue all we want about wether it's good or not but that's what's happening.

So far outside of courses and more "tech" dives (in my cavern/adv nitrox courses and the dive we did afterwards) I've never seen any other diver than myself with a table. Doesn't mean teaching tables is worthless, but I think not teaching about computers is retarded.

 

[The Chairman]

I think not teaching about computers is retarded.

Strong words, but I have to applaud them.

 

[John_B]

Don't most of them do that?

What they don't do is a very good job of helping a newer diver understand why a :30 SI is probably a bad idea. Anyone who can navigate a table can see what difference a 1:00 SI will make, or a 20' shallower dive, or a 10 minute shorter dive. Because, as inexact as pressure groups are, they are a pretty obvious planning metaphor that most people can understand once they have a little practice with tables. There is no corollary to that on any Suunto or Uwatec or Oceanic computer I've ever seen.

 

[Atom]

What they don't do is a very good job of helping a newer diver understand why a :30 SI is probably a bad idea. Anyone who can navigate a table can see what difference a 1:00 SI will make, or a 20' shallower dive, or a 10 minute shorter dive. Because, as inexact as pressure groups are, they are a pretty obvious planning metaphor that most people can understand once they have a little practice with tables. There is no corollary to that on any Suunto or Uwatec or Oceanic computer I've ever seen.

Yep, the ability to easily project into the future is really what's missing. Eperience will quickly give you this though. The relationship between longer SI and a longer dive is an easy one to make. But a table doesn't explain why it better to wait longer, it just makes it more explciit.

There's also a lot of divers who'll dive from boats with DMs and will blindly follow whatever schedule is being put forward (doesn't mean it's an unsafe schedule, just potentially misunderstood by the diver). In a situation like that I guess that flying a computer in a comfortable nodec zone is better than just following the DM.

Question for those who've been doing this for a while....what did vacation divers did before the advent of dive computers? Real planning with a table, or just follow a DM on a trust me dive? ( I assume people who dived independently knew what to do)

 

[FritzCat66]

Anyone who can navigate a table can see what difference a 1:00 SI will make, or a 20' shallower dive, or a 10 minute shorter dive. Because, as inexact as pressure groups are, they are a pretty obvious planning metaphor that most people can understand once they have a little practice with tables.

How is that table more intuitive than the N2 bar graph on most computers? I daresay a computer diver might make the mistake of ignoring that N2 reading before the second dive ONCE, then learn their lesson by being slapped with very little dive time on that subsequent dive.

But instead of spending the time in basic OW learning to look up the table, what if that same class time were spent learning to interpret computers better instead? Then they would know to respect that bar graph and how to use the basic planning function.

Over and over, arguments regarding the limitations of computers just do not translate to arguments for tables, but they do make good arguments for more training with computers - training time robbed by spending too much time and too many exercises on tables that simply do not get used.

 

[Puffer Fish]

What they don't do is a very good job of helping a newer diver understand why a :30 SI is probably a bad idea. Anyone who can navigate a table can see what difference a 1:00 SI will make, or a 20' shallower dive, or a 10 minute shorter dive. Because, as inexact as pressure groups are, they are a pretty obvious planning metaphor that most people can understand once they have a little practice with tables. There is no corollary to that on any Suunto or Uwatec or Oceanic computer I've ever seen.

Actually John, that is exactly what all the lastest Uwatec computers do. You put in the surface interval you want and it shows you how long you will have at whatever depth you pick...They no longer use the current surface time.

But one would see the same thing with an oceanic, if they just wait. I don't find using either that difficult... one just takes some understanding on where the numbers will be in some future time, the other you have to wait to get to that time.

 

[Blackwood]

What they don't do is a very good job of helping a newer diver understand why a :30 SI is probably a bad idea. Anyone who can navigate a table can see what difference a 1:00 SI will make, or a 20' shallower dive, or a 10 minute shorter dive. Because, as inexact as pressure groups are, they are a pretty obvious planning metaphor that most people can understand once they have a little practice with tables. There is no corollary to that on any Suunto or Uwatec or Oceanic computer I've ever seen.

Why is a 30 minute SIT a bad idea? Because it eats into the NDL of your subsequent dive. And that's easily read off a computer, no?

I will concede that maybe RNT is easier to teach with a table that lists it (as opposed to a bar graph on a computer display). However I maintain that the best possible result of teaching deco theory is an intuitive understanding of how profile affects gas loading - in water deco as opposed to out of water deco - and unequivocally dive computers which react to profile are the best way to show that.

If an aware computer diver looks down and sees that he's at (or about at) "the limit," he knows that all he needs to is ascend a bit and continue diving. If a properly taught table diver looks down and sees that he's at "the limit," he believes (because that's what he has been taught) that he must immediately begin a direct ascent to the surface. The former, blessed by a display that reacts in real time to the dive profile, gains an innate (albeit not fundamental) understanding of practical decompression theory. The latter has his no-more-fundamental understanding of decompression hamstrung by the fairly uncommon (wreck divers aside) constraints of square profiles.