CCR standardized practice

db8us

Here we are again. Before the first 2 pages are full people tend to think that we want "stop thinking on your own".
I heard a few weekends ago: Hey, you dive the longhose and the right post because someone said so.
I responded: No WE as a team decided to dive it on the right post because there a severeal reasons for it and then explained them.
I asked him, why he used the hose stuffed on the left post at his tank:
"Because my instructor told me i can do whatever i want concerning that and he had it like this".
Students TEND to just follow what the "teacher" is doing. You also realize this whenever you hear people talking about heir instructor beeing the best in the world. My first questions: How many instructors did you dive with in total usually ends up with "2", his PADI OWSI and his XYZ-Tech-Instructor.

So this argument of blind-following is non-existent IMHO, or better "alway existent", no matter if we use standards or not.
The above instrictor had no clue, because he could not explain it i guess, so he would have better just USED a standard, where other people already did the thinking.

If we conclude that standards are BS, because it makes people "blind-followers" then the discussion is over and out at that point ?

I do not think so...
Maybe Stuart can make Phi a moderator for this Thread, and the can wipe out all the non-contributing emails, like mine and Jasons

Michael

netmage

Any instructor worth a damn will first cover "the why"... vs. jumping to the answers in the back of the textbook.

Crazyduck

Michael,
Its people like you that are pain in the butt- you know that.
Then again I like your ideas and comments; you shot from the hip and don’t take any crap. Thank you for contributing…
I nominate YOU as the critic of any reporting and editing.
Wonder if you could rope in Dr. Mike to help you?

I would like to nominate Heather Choat and Benthic (Mr. Choat- darn lucky guy) to provide suggestions on team dynamics and support divers.

I want a real Nutter for the position of Ass Kicker.
I like Deco Diver- Dave but how about some other options.

Sugestions- AD_ward, IAIN-HSM, Hey Dude, Steve L, Simon Mitchell, and other folks that are doing nasty deep stuff.

I like Dr. Mike but don’t know if he would like to listen to any more of our rubbish?

Andrew

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Rob Davie April 2005-

Presently in a state of transition from Open Circuit to Closed Circuit.

"You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by it." - Buddha.

decoweenie

No offence to anyone, but here is my 2 cents..

• We need someone who is calm and collected to chair.
• It would be ideal for this person to have lots of Rebreather experience as well as participating with generating standards in the past, and not just following them.
• experience with different types of rebreather units.
• insanely-deep diving experience not necessary.
• teaching experience is a plus.

I had such a person perfect for the job, but he is not interested...

Regardless, since I started the thread, I will assume the acting-chair for now until we have someone volunteer for the job. I just don't want to lose any momentum since I could feel the vibs and we could embark on something that could be very useful (hoepfully).

So let's talk about agenda no 1: the unit...

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ScubaDadMiami

First and foremost, I like the idea of standardization of inlets at least where manual addition valves come into play. The moment of handing off a bottle to someone that needs gas is not the time that I want to find out that they do not have the same fitting, making injection even more work in an already stressful situation.

I also understand that there are shut off valves that work in one direction, and some that work in the opposite direction, as far as their operation goes. I think that this is just asking for trouble. It's not exactly like we would be talking about manufacturers having to re-configure units just to have some simple changes like this made.

As far as set point goes, there must be some kind of bracket that everyone can agree on. For shorter exposures, perhaps 1.3 or so max (not my personal preference though), and for longer, more like 1.0 (which is what I run most of the time anyway) on the bottom.

Diluent and offboard gas is where I would really like to see some kind of standardization. Before CCR, I was using 30/30, 21/35, 18/45, 15/55 and 10/70. Now, it seems that everyone has their own thing going except for perhaps some agreement on more or less 10/50+ for deep diluent. For those of us that have computers, it would be nice to be able to have a reasonable number of standard gases stored in the computer, and then this would make it much easier for trading off bottles in the event of having to resort to offboard gas in teams.

__________________
Howard Packer
IANTD CCR Instructor
Miami Beach, Florida
CCRDiveTraining.com

decoweenie

We could always change the objective of the topics. I have in mind the following items for discussion:

1. Which diluent should be used for which depth ? And why ?
2. Which set-point should be used for which depth ? And why ?
3. Should the Rebreather unit only take gas from on-board tanks ? And why ?
4. Or should it be capable of having off-board plug-in connector ? And why ?
5. How should we follow sorb usage guidline for units do not have specifications ? And why ?
6. Should we try to dive MLV ? And why ?
7. What pre-breath procedures should be in place ? And why ?

You guys should have an idea by now...

__________________
"...after a while you get bored offering advice to a bull that like to keep butting the fence with its head rather than walking through the open gate..."

- Rebreather World PM

6Gill

[quote=decoweenie;64515][/list]We could always change the objective of the topics. I have in mind the following items for discussion:

1. Which diluent should be used for which depth ? And why ?

/[quote]

Ok, I'll kick off a proposal on dil based on my past training. For determining mix, determine max operating depth for the dive and calc a mix that will give you a PO2 of 1.0 at that depth. This assures that a flush at depth will give a safe breathing mix. The HE percentage is a matter of EAD, without starting the is O2 toxic thread again, I like a clear head no more than 100' EAD. Let the fun begin!

Digger

OK, I talked a lot to Paul and Simon when we were trying to get started on this last time between us.

The unit has to be relatively general. We're not into deciding which units are in and out, the easiest way between us would be to say "dive this unit, and that's it" but in relaity a fair bit of flexibility is required, we often have Inspo, KISS and Meg on the same boat, and sometimes Boris too. One basic thing which was agreed on the unit front was the O2 and diluent should be on the same side on ALL units. O2 right, diluent left. Some early KISSes and some other units I've seen don't run this way, and they can almost all be reconfigured to do this. Means if a buddy has to shut off gas or when you're gearing up others know what you should be doing and can prevent a cock up (no matter how basic!)

I don't have a lot of suggestions on changes to units, I do think that everyone diving with ADV shutoffs should have the shutoff go the same way (I don't know which way this normally is, but I've encountered divers and/or units which do thigns differently)

All units should have an ADV. It makes a whole lot of sense, for open loop and to minimise task loading on descent. Mike's story on being stuck unable to operate inflators and just using the adv firing to get out of CO2 problems convinced me on this.

BOV as standard. I know this might not be popular, but they've saved a lot of lives, and the cost involved isn't that bad. This might be more of a preferred option, but personally I wouldn't dive without one. And I know more and more divers who are the same.

We'll let those out to see what comes back. I have a big long list of things which we discussed and started to come together on some things, and it didn't come together on others.

Just my 2c

Digs.

peter

Why not ask Stuart to open a new forum for this?
Call it DIC, DIR-CCR or whatever.

And make Phi, Dr Mike and xx or yy moderator of that new forum.
Then start a tread for each topic, Diluent, Bail-out, on/off board gases etc.
I think it should be easer to discuss each topic then.

Otherwise I think its an good idea to standardise CCR diving little more

__________________
Peter

Janos

Fellers,

I don't know much about rebreathers, and I'm very much a newbiew, but I do have some experience in problem structuring / systems. May I make a suggestion on how to approach this problem? Instead of focussing on the detail like which side O2 / dil goes on, perhaps an approach could be:

1) Determine a list of all possible underwater events
2) This informs the correct and unique respone in the situation
3) This determines the kit configuration and diver skills required to deal with the situation.

For example:
Event: Diver experiences CO2 symptoms in Open Water
Response: Diver bails to OC, Buddy does blah, blah
Implications for DIR-CCR: Diver must carry [blah blah] bailout configured in such a way to enable buddy to do blah blag or whatever

Event 2: Diver loses O2,
Reponse: etc.etc.

Once we have gone through this procedure for all events (which may not be emergency events) we will (probably) have a list of conflicting solutions and configurations. Then we need to go through a resolving and compromise process to come up with the solution that fits all.

This seems to me to be a systematic way to solve the problem. What do you think?

Janos

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