Posted by Karl S. on June 11, 2002 at 10:20:47:
In Reply to: Actually Chuck.. posted by Eric S on June 10, 2002 at 22:00:11:
Chuck is just a little picky and a bit sensitive about syntax when it pertains to his favorite passtime: scuba.
Those of us who have lived and worked in both NorCal and SoCal are less sensitive about the syntax. For that matter, Oregonians and Washingtonians probably feel the same way about all Californians viewing the West Coast as theirs alone.
Its a big West Coast, with fast freezing currents in Wash St and rough cold coastline in Oregon as well.
seahunt-MikeB [small s], since you probably havent met him, Chuck is about your height [very tall] only thinner. He probably weights half of what you do, so carrying tons of gear down and up a beach would be a consideration for him, unlike for yourself, BigGuy.
As far as getting back to the original point of seahunt's post about Nitrox, I do agree that it makes sense to just O2-clean all your tanks, except for your small pony bottle and your argon bottle. Thats what Chuck was trying to add.
I own 10 tanks, 8 of which are O2 cleaned for Nitrox or Trimix, and the smaller 2 are for argon and air respective, not O2 cleaned.
Some dive shops and their clientele have no demand for Nitrox. I think that is unfortunate. Nitrox is here, so we might as well all use it. Oxygen is not a deminishing resource, so there is no disadvantage to adding it to enriched air mixtures for "shallow-water" recreational/resort scuba diving.
Nitrox builds up less N2 obligation, and Nitrox offgasses the N2 more quickly on ascent and during safety stops. EAN32 is safe to 100 fsw, and non-tech-trained divers should limit their diving to 100 fsw anyway. Any way you look at it, Nitrox makes sense. That is what seahunt [small s] is elaborating upon, and maybe looking for some feedback about.
All diving is decompression diving, per IANTD. And NDL diving is merely a subset of decompression diving. Nitrox for NDL is better than air for all of the reasons that it is good as a deep decompression gas.
See you at Van Damme, maybe, on Saturday. I will probably bring tanks and be looking for Uni not Abs. I can get abs closer to home, near Jenner.