Posted by Eric S on February 16, 2005 at 08:08:55:
I was re-reading the thread below about computers and thought of something else.
Take a buddy team, if they are diving two different computers with different algorithms and let's say they are doing some long agressive dives, it seems to me that if they obeyed their computers to the letter they would cease to be a buddy team at some point in the later part of the dive just based on penalties or rewards by the computer.
Then at that point, just based on the computer, both members of the the team would have to use the exact same computer to stay compliant with one algorithm.
But then what if you are on a boat by yourself and get buddied up with someone you don't know?
This actually happend to me with a buddy. He used an Oceanic and I was using a Vyper. There were some marked differences in what they allowed. The Vyper was more conservative on bottom time but let's you back in quicker, and the Oceanic was more aggressive on bottom time but keeps you out longer. I don't know if the Oceanic penalizes you for deep stops, probably. I know the Vyper does, that's why on deep dives I use it on guage mode and run tables. But if you run guage mode it will lock you out of regular computer mode for 48 hours 'cause it doesn't know what you did.
So if you are doing multi day diving and switch to guage you better know your tables whichever ones you choose, and unless you want to get screwed out of a lot of bottom time by running square profiles... I guess that's where the depth averaging thing comes in :-)