SAC Rate

[mccabejc]

Since I just got a cable to hook my Cobra to my computer, and since my honey isn't home yet, and since I'm an engineer who has to monkey around with fancy gadgets, I figured I'd waste some time messing with the Cobra. So I plotted my SAC for my last five dives (I'm a new diver, and I've only done 10 dives total). The results are shown below. I've also included a trend line, which shows that not only is my consumption showing a decreasing trend, but at this rate, after another 10 or 20 dives, I won't consume ANY air during my dives.

Sweet......

 

[Uncle Pug]

Good job Jim. You actually can achieve the goal of not using any air on a dive. I have.

 

[WJL]

Why stop the projection at another 20 dives? At 40 dives, you'll be coming up from the dive with more gas than you started with.

This reminds me of those studies on highway densities. If you extrapolate the data on the decreasing number of occupants per vehicle over time, after 10 years every third car would have nobody in it.

 

[Seabear70]

Strangely, they have been testing those for a while...

 

[GoBlue!]

Careful, Jim. If you get too excited about this, your SAC will increase...and when you trend it out, you'll soon be running out of gas before you even start the dive.

Jim

 

[Lead_carrier]

Why stop the projection at another 20 dives? At 40 dives, you'll be coming up from the dive with more gas than you started with.
.

Don't listen to him Jim.. to accomplish this task all you have to do is eat some spicy mexican food the night before a dive. but then again the air isn't neccessarily breathable.

 

[WJL]

Don't listen to him Jim.. to accomplish this task all you have to do is eat some spicy mexican food the night before a dive. but then again the air isn't neccessarily breathable.

Hey, I'm all for Jim's efforts to exploit this remarkable situation. I don't want to stand in the way of scientific progress. I am confident that as an engineer, he will soon harness this heretofore unknown source of breathing gas, for the betterment of all humanity.

All kidding aside, even if Jim's SAC rate never does go negative, he is to be applauded both for paying attention to something many new divers ignore, and for making such impressive strides in decreasing his SAC rate in just a few dives.

 

[mccabejc]

Did I mention that all those dives were in my swimming pool? At the shallow end. While sleeping.

Does that matter?

 

[pasley]

Jim,
Good trend line. I recently (first week of August) did an unscientific poll here of what a "normal" sac rate was. The resultsare below the average was 0.5 to 0.69 So you are doing well.

http://www.scubaboard.com/t65982.html

 

[mccabejc]

Actually Melvin, it was your post and poll that got me thinking about it. Before I read your post I thought that SAC was Strategic Air Command.