I am almost sheepish posting here following the experience levels.... but....I think my reasoning is sound and other new divers may find it useful.
I dive a Smart Com. I have it set to be more conservative because I would rather dive a little less today and be around tomorrow to dive again.
My reasoning is:
- I take medicine to control blood pressure (Have physician approval to dive and it is under control)
- I could be in better shape
- I am still learning to dive. A margin of safety gives me more room to mess up and still be okay. I feel like at 27 dives I am competent, but not experienced. I consider myself an advanced beginner and try to remain acutely aware that I don't know it all, haven't seen it all, and need to mind my P's and Q's to dive safely. Safety starts with a good plan and a sound limit. The underlying philosophy is best summed up with a review of driving. Most drivers can safely follow another vehicle at 1 to 2 car lengths at freeway speeds. However, allowing more room improves the margin of safety and reduces the chances of an accident by allowing more reaction time and a lower risk profile. Likewise, in diving a variety of physical, personal, medical, and situational factors combine to illustrate a risk profile that is unique to each individual on each dive. Understanding a safe limit and then further reducing that limit reduces the contribution of some risk factors in my opinion and thus makes the dive likely to be safer.
- I don't get the luxury of diving daily, so I do trips where I dive for a week at a time followed by a few months of "off-time".
All of this supports taking it easy and setting my computer to be more conservative is a way of having it remind me to take it easy and not push myself.
Specifically:
- I have "level diving" on and set to Level 5.
- I have PPO2 set for a 10% lower threshold then the tables.
- I am diving a gas-integrated computer and have it set to alarm if I am breathing too much gas. This helps alert me if I am over-exerting myself (a DCS factor). Now, a caveat, the gas consumption model appears to be set for a small athlete because it whines at me if I leave it in the default settings. So I have that enabled, but desensitized (as opposed to being turned off which is what many divers do).