I have just purchased the VT3, while i am reading this extremely long winded document on how to use it. Can you tell me what i have to programme to go diving and which sequence i use. If i sit before going out to programme either for air or nitrox what is the sequence to get to put i the required %? Once i have completed my first dive i get out of the water how do i look at what i have just done to refer back to complete my PADI file and then from there start again for the next dive?
I was wondering if you are able to help me as i am finding the reading material very hard to follow.
The operator's manuals for the dive computers make me laugh. They make it a lot harder than it needs to be, and it doesn't limit itself to Aeris/Oceanic either. The Sherwood Wisdom is probably the easiest computer to use and it has a book almost as thick.
First of all, it is preprogrammed and ready to go. You can jump in the water right now with it and it will turn itself on and start working.
What you program in are YOUR preferred settings for various alarms and factors. For example, I think that the turnaround pressure alarm is default at 1500-psi. If you want it to be at 1000-psi or 2000-psi then you can program that in. Or if you want to end up with 500-psi by the time you finished your safety stop and surfaced, then you can program that setting in - actually it came preset at 500-psi but you can crank it down or crank it up depending on how much gas you want in your tank at the end of the dive.
Default setting for ATA is 1.6 so if you were to want to crank that down, then you need to go to SET A and wade through the menu until you get to set your ATA. If 1.6 is good for you then leave it alone.
SET F is where you put in your O2 %.
How to get to SET A or SET F or SET whatever? Hold the buttons on the side of the computer and the right button down until the computer starts to cycle through the SET etc. You'll see SET A first and if you were to keep these two buttons pushed down, it will scroll through and come to SET F then you let the buttons go and put in your O2 %. Remember that this computer is capable of 3-gas mixes (3-separate tanks), so if you were to dive with only one tank then do the O2 % for the first tank and just punch through the next two tanks.
Then you'd come to the Default setting. Default is factory set at 50% O2 so that if you were to screw up and forgot to reset your O2 % for the next dives, the alarm will kick in when you're in shallow depth to help you from getting oxygen toxicity. You can either turn the default on or off. Most people turn it off.
