Posted by Kendall Raine on February 16, 2005 at 16:12:27:
In Reply to: but you cannot defend your position can you? posted by northcoast diver on February 16, 2005 at 15:32:25:
Karl;
It's nonsense on its face because on the one hand you wrote: "Run the deco models and see. With EAN 35, limited to 100 ft MOD, and 80 cu ft of breathing gas, and 1 hour surface intervals between dives, you can dive forever." On the other hand you profiled a series of dives to 100 feet with 20 minute bottom times to illustrate that as long as you stay 100 or shallower can dive basically all day. But, why only 20 minutes per dive if in fact "...you can dive forever?" The answer is your model has you into deco if you do more.
The fact is I can easily exceed 20 minutes at 100 feet on an 80. More if shallower. If I don't depth average, I have not idea what my pressure time exposure (deco and CNS) is and no idea how to manage the cumulative deco obligation. All I know is it's not greater than some outer bound. That in turn will lead me to doing a lot of deco I don't need or skipping dives I could be doing. Why would I want to limit myself with such a dumbed down approach? It's that sort of simplemindedness that brought about the dive computer in the first place.
You can't compensate for lack of awareness by gas selection.