Posted by Brian Donaghy on February 17, 2005 at 05:28:09:
In Reply to: not practical for all situations posted by Chris on February 16, 2005 at 22:25:21:
Hi Chris,
I really wasn't trying to promote depth averaging or whatever. I was just trying to make the point that you don't need to do any complicated integration or summations to arrive at a reasonable approximation of average depth. The human mind is quite adept at picking out the dominant pattern in or a reasonable approximation of a given data set. Computers often have to employ complex algorithms (or at least processing intensive iterations) to arrive at comparable results.
As for diving, I appreciate most people would not want the bother or 'responsibility' of having to judge the average depth of a segment of the dive. It is obviously less easy on an unfamiliar multi-level site when task loaded but I believe still achievable. In way of an example, we manage it in dives in caves which are strongly multi-level and unfamiliar to us even when task loaded with running a line or negotiating restrictions for parts of the dive. We could easily swim over a mile on such a dive. I don’t really want to get into well it would/wouldn’t work in this case type debate. However lots of people do successfully use this technique on very complex dives and I typically judge methods by their results.
1) Why not just use a computer? Well I used to use a computer for less advanced (ie. within the NDL) dives but it becomes impractical if you are doing a deep dive in the morning and a couple of 'recreational' dives in the afternoon etc. And even on fairly benign dives if it tips over into deco it just winds me up with its nonsense. I appreciate most people are happy to have something which they just use to tell them where the limit is (and sneak over it now and then) and to that end I'm sure it makes their diving life easier.
2) Well in decompression terms I'd say that diving within the NDL is the trivial case of diving in general.
3) It was a tongue in cheek comment. I'm sure we all have better things to do than read such dross.
Hopefully we’ll get to do some more Californian diving in the future.