| Re: How to dive deep - comments on article
Thanks for all your excellent comments! It sounds like it now is time to update the article based on the feedback. I'm planning to add a section called "Bailout configuration". This is such a big topic that I intend to narrow it down to configurations that one can carry by one self. That means that team bail-out, deco stations, staged bottles and other fun things will be left for the next article.
It appears that factors such as availability and price of helium, quality of filling station, type of analyzers and the amount of mixing efforts has an impact on gas choice. It seems natural to boil it down to three choices (or combinations of them)
1. No mixing
This is what currently is in the article. The pros and cons seem to be:
+ No mixing needed
+ No extra helium needed (cheap)
- Narcosis will hit you hard when you want it the least
- You have to get up all the way to 6m before your oxygen becomes usable
2. Simple mixing
This option is to use mixes based on air which means Nitrox as rich mix and HeliAir as lean mix. A natural choice seem to be to use Nitrox 50 and HeliAir with as little helium as possible that still keeps you away from narcosis. The pros and cons seem to be:
+ Simple to mix
+ Can be analyzed with O2 analyzer
+ Rich mix can be used twice as deep as pure oxygen
- More mixing and analyzing efforts than option 1
3. Advanced mixing
This is custom trimix combinations. In the most extreme case this would mean using only Heliox such as 50/50 as rich and say 15/85 as lean. In reality one would probably allow more deco obligation in exchange for less need of helium.
+ Minimal deco obligation
- Most expensive option
- More mixing effort than option 2
- Needs helium analyzer to analyze if not heliox is used
What do you guys think? |