Quiz - Recreational Dive Planner™ - Pressure Group

[HKGuns]

That was two decades later!

Pretty sure I know what your answer will be to this one as well, but I did start out on a TI80! Wish I knew where that one went.

 

[BlueTrin]

Pretty sure I know what your answer will be to this one as well, but I did start out on a TI80! Wish I knew where that one went.

I had a TI-92 at some point.

It was more like a Palm than a calculator, could probably throw it at bullies for self-defense with its size ...

 

[rhwestfall]

HP42s was my friend through school. It has died, and I use an emulator on my PC, tablet, and phone as it isn't made anymore.

 

[HKGuns]

HP42s was my friend through school. It has died, and I use an emulator on my PC, tablet, and phone as it isn't made anymore.

My 42S still works, but I too use an app on my iphone, PCALC Lite.....Once you go RPN you can never go back.

 

[kmarks]

Having recently completed PADI OW just last summer, I have to disagree. There were test questions to evaluate your knowledge of dive tables and we used them for open water dives.

I feel that any gaps are on the instructor and the student, not the training.

As the student, you don't know what you don't know. Say what you want about the level of my instruction and the quality of my instructors - there certainly were some gaps and if you were around seven years ago and read my wife's first posts here about our class, you probably would have been in the group that said we were being underserved and should find a new instructor - I managed to come out of it a competent learner and that's what an OW graduate should be. You can't teach everything in a weekend.

As I said, when I did my open water training with a PADI shop, they gave us a computer supplement and told us not to even look at the dive tables section. I did anyway because I am like that. I learned how to use the tables to plan a dive so that I wouldn't have to go through the tedious dive planning on a dive computer.

I was certified by LA Country in 1970 and used USN tables. I was recertified with my son in 1997 and used PADI tables. I was nitrox certified in 2002 and used PADI tables. I will never forget how to use tables . I have been using a dive computer since 2002, and have not used tables since. Personally, I think there is still value in knowing how tables work.

I definitely think they are valuable and I love teaching them to students. For me, going through the dive tables is like doing those logic puzzle books you used buy at the airport book store before smartphones were a thing.

 

[scubadada]

I was working at a NATO lab in Italy with the first HP-35 was introduced. The head of our IT department happened to be at HP headquarters in Switzerland at the time, and managed to borrow one for us to play with for a short time, then he had to send it back. We set up a list of those who wanted to play with it, and divided the number of people into the time we had. I got it for 6h....from midnight to 6am. At midnight there was a knock on my door and I was handed the calculator and the manual. I stayed up all night, playing, comparing things to log tables, etc. Before the sun began to rise, I took it to the next person on the list. What fun!

We had a HP65 in the lab I worked in at the VA Hospital while I was an undergraduate at UCSD. This was around 1973-4. We recorded programs on the magnetic cards to run our most tedious calculations and used the prerecorded statistics programs to do our stats. This was indeed, a miracle.

I did not have an IBM XT at work or my Commodore 64 at home until around 1984

 

[Steve_C]

From the Recreational Dive Planner section of the PADI Dive Theory Exam. You will need your RDP to answer this question.

Don't have a RDP. Never used a RDP. Have used tables a few times to see roughly time availbabe on dive 2.

 

[rhwestfall]

My 42S still works, but I too use an app on my iphone, PCALC Lite.....Once you go RPN you can never go back.

and a specific keypad layout.....

 

[TMHeimer]

I was certified by LA Country in 1970 and used USN tables. I was recertified with my son in 1997 and used PADI tables. I was nitrox certified in 2002 and used PADI tables. I will never forget how to use tables . I have been using a dive computer since 2002, and have not used tables since. Personally, I think there is still value in knowing how tables work.

I do a PADI RDP problem every other day, the other days a Nitrox one. I saved all the examples I wrote down from various courses. So I didn't bother with the question. I just do this out of habit.
Does the PADI OW exam still have tables questions, general computer questions or both?

 

[tursiops]

Have used tables a few times to see roughly time availbabe on dive 2.

Was that to compare with your computer or instead of?