Who dives with 2 computers?

[nereas]

The conditions of every individual dive dictate the required gear.

1) Warm water, stunning vis, shallow reef -- all you need are your eyes and your brain, and an SPG on your tank. Your dive will end when your psi reaches about 500.

2) Deep shipwreck, decompression plan, mixed gasses -- even for dives like this, some divers only use a depth gauge and a timer. Of course, I would not recommend it.

I like diving with my Nitek HE and my Suunto Vyper together. For nitrox dives, I keep them both activated. For helium dives, I activate and program the Nitek, and keep the Suunto in gauge mode with a backup slate with deco data written on it. I know this is overkill, but it tells me that both are functioning properly at any given time rather than just gathering dust in my scuba gear chest.

By the way, if you want to talk about seriously running up the bucks, then photography gear is probably in first place, DPVs in second, metal detection gear in 3rd, side-scan sonar, etc!

 

[don Francisco]

I agree with Charlie99, It's very easy to get carried away with redundancy. Speaking now only of open water diving, your redundancy is the ready availabitity of a bailout option to the surface.

In planning your dives consider the possible consequences of a failure in any piece of equipment & decide if they warrant redundancy. If the worst case scenario of the loss of a piece of equipment is an abreviated dive, save yourself the cost of owning & maintaining redundant hardware..

If you've planned well & know your depth/time profiles, probably the only critical gauge is your SPG. Your buddy's watch, or depth gauge can be your backup, but you'd have to limit yourself to a more conservative plan based on dive tables. (If you actually planned your dive, & dove your plan, you'd know roughly where you stood)

I have one question for those who dive with multiple computers. If you don't trust the computer why are you using it in the first place?

 

[Eau_Girl]

I have one question for those who dive with multiple computers. If you don't trust the computer why are you using it in the first place?

My principle computer has been 100% reliable to date. Hopefully I will never have it fail underwater. My main concern is that the battery might run down, but I do monitor that and have it replaced well in advance. Clearly there are ways to get back to the surface safely when a piece of equipment fails. However, when you have gone to the effort and expense to plan a holiday to a remote place or are on a liveaboard, I want to reduce the chances that equipment failure will cause me to miss diving. I'd rather take responsibility for my own back-up equipment.

 

[El Orans]

My back up is a bottom timer.

Ditto.

One Suunto Mosquito
One Uwatec bottom timer.

 

[SteveAD]

I own a dive shop and therefore I'm continuously upgrading my gear with all the latest and greatest as it comes out. I currently own at least five dive computers that are my own personal property. The only time I ever actually dive with more than one is if I am doing multiple dives over multiple days and really want to maximize my bottom time (think liveaboard). In the event of a single computer failure in order to switch to a new "fresh" computer I would have to have a 24 hour SI, therefore I will carry a backup so that in the event of a primary failure (hasn't happened yet knock wood) my backup is ready to take over. For a single day of diving it isn't worth the hassle.

 

[don Francisco]

Eau Girl, you've made my point perfectly. If the worst case scenario involves lost opportunities on an expensive, long planned dive trip, redundancy makes perfect sense. My point is to analyse each situation & equip oneself accordingly, taking everything that's needed & nothing that isn't.

Aeons ago I was an active cycle tourist, going out for trips of 30 days or more. When you have to drag everything you pack miles & miles, up & down hills, under your own power, you quickly learn to evaluate everything you pack based projected need.

 

[Eau_Girl]

On a slightly different angle....but I'm sure you will all agree.

If you get 1, 2 or 100! computers, you should know how to use them! When I bought my first one right after certifying, my LDS owner/instructor showed me not only the basics, but he also showed me what happens when you go into deco. He explained how to read the ceilings/floor and time required on deco stops to get back to the surface safely. I've been on liveaboards and seen 2 different people (my buddy in one instance) get 'locked out' by their computer because they accidentally hit deco and then didn't respect the stops on the way up. On each occasion that was minimum 24 hours of of the water. My buddy took it well and chalked it up as a lesson learnt and then used the dry time to plow through her nitrox course.

 

[flw]

In the red sea couple of years back, the guy who'd been a know-all all week, but a yoyo in the water was heard to say - 'what does sos mean on my computer?' - oh, says me, yu must have missed a bit of deco somewhere. Nope, he replied, I'm padi trained I don't do deco, it's too dangerous.....

 

[Eau_Girl]

Nope, he replied, I'm padi trained I don't do deco, it's too dangerous.....

 

[Damselfish]

I dive with 2 computers, because I have generally gone to a lot of time and expense to get where I'm diving and don't want to lose dive time because of a computer failure. Basic dive computers are a whole lot cheaper than the dives I could lose. If I was just doing a couple dives at home, it would be different.

A depth gauge and bottom timer is of no use as a backup to me when I'm doing 4-5 multilevel each day, I'd be off the tables. My buddies computers are not a backup - besides not having exactly the same profiles, sometimes one of us may skip a dive while the other person dives with someone else so they can be even further apart. And I want to do more than get back to the surface, I want to dive again in an hour.