Posted by MHK on March 05, 2001 at 17:25:06:
In Reply to: seahunt's DIRt on the DIR Demo. posted by seahunt on March 05, 2001 at 16:02:01:
Seahunt,
It was nice to meet you face to face even though it appears that we haven't resolved the issues. I'll respond but the second it starts taking a ugly turn I'm outta here.
I believe that you are the only one who left that room thinking that we had secrets to keep and were unwilling to share them. In point of fact, it's difficult to speak from 3:00 to 8:30 with 60 people of varying skill and interest levels, but JJ did the best he could. If after speaking to JJ, Carmichael, Lonsdale, Walker, Terry and myself you still don't get it it's possible that DIR isn't for you. That doesn't mean it is inapplicable to our diving, it just simply means that it isn't for you.
I also think that you misunderstood Robert Carmichael's answer. In fact, he and I discussed it in great detail at dinner afterwards and we both came to the conclusion that you wanted to hear a specific answer as opposed to hearing what JJ and Robert were saying. So let's be clear about what was said:
You dive with a wetsuit, a steel tank and your stated reason was that you wanted the steel tank for additional air and BT. that doesn't really make much sense since the profiles you generated show a max BT of 30 minutes. Can you not do 30 minutes with an AL 80 or AL 100??
But either way the tank issue that we were discussing, much to the distraction of everyone else in the room due to the length, was that you were 38 lbs of lead and a 7 lb negative steel tank, which means you are wearing 45 lbs of weight with a wetsuit. The concern, of course, is that if your baldder fails can you surface, why so much weight, and your stated explanantion that you need to continually keep moving to stay off the bottom.
That's problematic for several reasons:
1) due to the continual requirement of constant movement you are increasing your RMV, that is counterproductive and is one possible reason why you need the added air volume.
2) Should your bladder fail you would then be dropping 38 lbs of lead and would likely rocket to the surface, this would be especially true as you got shallower and your weightsuit began to expand. That is why Robert said you are probably better off with a steel tank to prevent the rocket to the surface. He was trying to say that you are putting yourself in a very dangerous scenario in the first place and as such two wrongs may be better than one. It seems you only wanted to hear an excuse to say it's OK to dive wet with steel tanks. Robert said to me afterwards that he had the same hunch that I had so he invited you to confirmn what I have just posted. He is the guy that did the tests that we introduced. His e-mail address is halcyon@halcyon.net ;
3) As you know a wetsuit compresses at depth, so if you are at a 100' your weightsuit provides little, if any, lift capacity and given the excessive weight I'd be hard pressed to believe that in an emergency, stressful situation that your attention and resources wouldn't be better served attending to the problem and not worrying about kicking as hard as you could to surface;
4) I'd also worry that in that circumstance a C02 buildup could easily aoocur.
As for the GUE and/or WKPP website not being informational, do yo get anywhere near that kind of information from any other agency???? You want everything for free over the internet and diving takes practice and education and skills and tools aren't properly given over a website. I don't see any other agency providing free demo's and I believe that is an unfair acusation.
As for JJ's knowledge about Ca. diving, he has a fair amount of Ca. diving experience and in addition to that we brought the head of the L.A. County Sherriff department dive rescue team, we had Walker, Terry and myslef available to help facilitate any local issues to the extent JJ wasn't up to speed. We operate as a team and are there for each other, so I also feel that it's an unfair characterisation. Furthermore, JJ suggested to you that you *top off* with air after you use your Nitrox tank that you brought on the boat, thus providing for added F02's. You then dumbfounded everyone in the room by suggesting that a membrane cost $50,000. You later backed off that position when it was made clear to you that $50,000 is an outrageous price. Remeber these guys build and sell them so what you meant to say was that someone told you that they needed a new compressor and a membrane and that cost $50,000. I'm sure you didn't intentionally mislead, but the real fact of the matter is that we, as a dive community, need to push to make Nitrox more accessible and this issue doesn't speak to any lack of understanding on JJ's part. He knows full well the market and he is on the same page as us, in that the more it is asked for the more inclined the boats will be to get it...
Now to your explaination of our attempts to discuss deco ( a.k.a. NDL limits) and you asking JJ for clues.. He explained it 1/2 a dozen times, I explained it and I'm not trying to flame here but everyone who had a clue about deco theory recognized almost immediately that you are very far from having a grasp on the underlying issues, and as such you only wanted to hear what you wanted to hear.
You continued to compare the Buhlamn NDL's to the RGBM and VPM models and were astonished to find varying results. I think you were hoping we would tell you that we would magically arrive at the Buhlman M-values when what we were trying to tell you is that we can have added BT's by using the right gas, by incorporating deep stops and using a different model.
For example, if you look at the DSAT tables and wanted to do a dive to 140' it would give you 7 minutes. I use that as an example for a few reasons, Kendall and I did a dive the morning of the demo. We did the Moody and spent 30 minutes at 140' and we didn't look bent to you did we??? It's a local dive, it's a local dive that has a traggic history when done improperly, but according to you DIR doesn't apply out here. But yet Kendall and I managed to pull it off so that is why it is frustrating when you make blanket statements such as inapplicability when we do it every weekend... See my other post for more specifics and I'm sure we'll keep this going.
Most people attended with an open mind and I'm hopefull that they walker away with a better understanding an appreciation for the benefits of DIR. It seemed to be you walked in with a rather closed mind and an agenda and I think you missed a golden opportunity, but nonetheless now having met you and had personal exchanges with you it is much easier for me to understand where you are coming from...
Later