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rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Spent a good 2.5 hours pool diving today to volunteer at a Marine Advanced Technology Education competition assisting with setup and judging their underwater robotics event. Diving it was cool, but man I wanted to drive one of those things. One of them looked like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit which was awesome.

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rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
When I got my open water cert I had asked about advanced and they had told me there was no reason I couldn't take the advanced class immediately after. They said that they actually had some people who hadn't done any dives between the two even. Advanced also doesn't have a standard way of teaching it like open water does either, you just need to complete five of the however many specific dives, i.e. night, deep water, nitrox, etc. My friend is an instructor and although I don't have my advanced yet, we're checking off the dives as I dive with him. I only need one more and he can give me my advanced. He said that when he teaches me cavern that he can classify that as a night dive and give me both certs.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Kaddish posted:

I thought there was classroom element to PADI nitrox? My understanding is the diving itself is pretty much the same as with regular air but you need to learn new tables.

It's only a classroom element. Technically there is no diving necessary for it. My buddy just gave me the study materials and had me take the test and then he graded it and $30 later I was good to go. You can however use a nitrox dive as one of your skills for the advanced class.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Cold is relative. Everyone has different comfort levels with temperature in the water just like they do on land. I've been on boats with people diving in board shorts and a rash guard next to a guy in a 5mm with a chest warmer and a hood. I'd look up water temps and go by that since it's an objective statistic.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
The diving gods have been against me the last couple months. I've had three dives cancelled because of weather and today's dive was cancelled because the motor in the dive boat died. I still need to go use my new camera damnit!

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Finally got back out into the ocean after months of cancelled dives to to weather and broken boat motors. Did a three tank dive off of West Palm Beach yesterday. A couple wreck dives and a reef dive. I hadn't done a wreck, let along a wreck penetration so that was a pretty cool experience. It was a really easy wreck to go through, wide open areas that were easy to swim through with several people in our group. Took a few cool photos while I was down there, but as I just came to realize. None of my card readers will read an XD card and the guy I bought the camera from couldn't find the cable for the camera, so for now they are stuck on my card. Time to do some shopping.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Finch! posted:

Buy a cable rather than a card reader. I've had bad experiences with poor quality card readers completely ruining XD cards.

I actually ordered both, but I could have used the USB card reader for CF cards anyways. I'll probably stick to the cable for copying over images from the XD then.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Got my card reader and cable now and I thought I'd post one of my better photos.



I'm headed down to Key Largo and Key West for a few days from August 1st-5th. I'm still holding out hope to dive with Bishop off his boat in Key Largo while I'm down here. I sent him a PM a few weeks ago and haven't heard back, haven't seen him in the thread either.

Does anyone have any recommendations for charters in Key West and potentially Key Largo if I don't hear back from Bishop?

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

SlicerDicer posted:

Whos Inspo Classic?

A buddy of mine's. He bought it used off of my other buddy who replaced it with the newer model that doesn't have all the dangling gauges. He tried to get me to buy it, but I didn't have the money at the time.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Yeah, even more than the clotting, jaw soreness is what would worry me. I'd be worried that biting down would cause a lot of jaw pain and make you not want to hold your regulator in. Definitely be cautious about it.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Heading out with Silent World in Key Largo for a wreck/reef dive in a few minutes. I'll be bringing my gopro and my still camera with me so I hope to come back with some cool photos and footage. I'll be diving the Vandenberg in Key West on Saturday too and snorkeling Christ of the Abyss tomorrow.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

This is the shop I do all of my diving with. I hope you had a good trip. I randomly checked their facebook just now and saw: "Great night dive on the Northern Light last night." Wow, just wow. Open ocean high current 200' deep wreck? gently caress it let's do a night dive. That owns so hard and i'm pretty jealous that I missed it.
Also Slicer, I hate you too :)

Thanks again for the suggestion, diving with them was great. I was really hoping to do a wreck with them, but we had a really new junior diver so we did two pretty shallow dives. One at the the elbow reef and one at the ledge near the reef and drifted in. Got to practice working with a reel and surface marker which was good. I have to give Chris a big thanks, we had a mishap and my gear fell over and my tank/reg hit the boat and there was a leak. My first stage now a leak, it looks like it's a bit misaligned, but we didn't really have time to troubleshoot it. Thankfully weren't far from shore and he turned the boat and around and grabbed me a spare reg set to borrow.

Today we snorkeled in the Pennekamp reef today which was a lot of fun. Definitely saw a bunch of fire coral, way more jellyfish though. The second spot we hit was a drat sea of them. Thankfully I made it out un-stung. I wish I wore my dive skin instead of a suit and rash guard though just in case. We hit the statue on the third spot but weather turned to crap and the seas started to get choppy so it was a serious battle to swim out to it from the boat. By the time we got to it we were exhausted so I only had time to snap a couple of quick photos before we had to turn back for the boat.

Tomorrow I'm doing a double dip on the Vandenberg which I'm really exited for. Far and away the biggest wreck I'll have seen. Can't wait to do some photos of it and hopefully get some cool gopro footage too.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

something_clever posted:


Does anyone have advice/success stories for divers with equalizing problems? Antihistamines, Decongestants or better equalizing techniques? Ear, nose and throat specialists?

Usually it's recommended that you don't dive on decongestants because they can wear off while underwater and it may make it hard on your body to re-equalize as you surface. I'm not sure if an antihistamine would help or not. I take them daily for my allergies and I don't have problems when diving. I've never had major problems equalizing, but every now and then I'll have one ear that doesn't want to clear when I start to descend. Typically I just go back up a couple feet, wait about 20 seconds while shifting my jaw around then try to blow again and it will open up.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

The Vandenberg is giant. I've only dove it once (I think around 110m runtime?) and I just lapped it once and did a bit of peaking into things. Do they still have the art instillation with pictures of ghosts hanging laundry and such on it?

Yep, the art gallery is still there.



You can see a little more of it in the video I shot on my GoPro while I was down there. I threw together some of the cooler spots into a condensed version. I had the camera aimed a little high from my line of sight so the footage of the art isn't the best, but you can see some of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCA9tvFpdmU&feature=plcp

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
It's Goliath Grouper spawning season in Jupiter, FL right now. I'm heading out on Sunday to dive with them. My buddy said last weekend they counted 104 of them on one of the wrecks. Really looking forward to doing some photo and video of it.

I'm also diving at Epcot on Saturday as well, should be a pretty awesome weekend underwater.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
If you decide to dive the Vandenberg, I can recommend going with Captain's Corner. I just dove with them the other weekend and it was a great time. It's a big boat, but it wasn't full and I liked the high deck, it kept stuff dry and they had a wash tank and spray hose on board to clean your gear during the ride back to shore.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Tossed up some video from my dive with the Goliath Grouper off the coast of Jupiter, FL a week ago. We saw easily over 150 grouper on one of the dives, it was pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tycri8cWEYY

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

BiggerJ posted:

I'm not considering getting into diving, but out of curiosity and for the benefit of anyone who is: what suggestions would you give to anyone who's considering getting into diving? How much money should be saved beforehand, things to keep in mind when arranging travel and while actually traveling, etc.

A few more specific questions:

How expensive a hobby is it? What's the minimum level of income someone should have for the hobby to be even remotely feasible?

What should be kept in mind when traveling to and staying in a third-world country?

You don't really need to save up beforehand, aside from the money it takes to get certified, which is typically somewhere between $200-500 depending on price of the course and if you have a mask and fins already. Aside from that you don't really need to save any money if you don't want to. Depending on how often you dive, renting gear is a completely reasonable option. Most dive charters rent gear which can be worthwhile if you're not diving often since dive gear isn't necessarily cheap and needs maintenance. If you only dive a couple times a year, I'd personally rent gear instead of owning it.

As for if you want to buy gear, it all depends on how much you want to spend. If you don't mind looking at used gear, you can get a full set up for as little as $500 or less. If you go new and high end, you could easily spend a few grand. If you get into more complex and advanced equipment, you can get over $10k. I think looking at it in terms of income is a bad way of looking at any hobby since income doesn't take anything like your personal expenses and discretionary income into play. It's not a cheap activity to get into by any means, but you can certainly be economical when diving. The more you get into though, the more you're going to pay just on the fact that you'll want to dive more though and a typical two tank dive off of a boat is usually in the $60-90 range.

As for traveling, I've never dove in a third world country, but the one thing I can absolutely, 100% recommend is having DAN diving insurance. DAN will cover a lot more than just medical expenses when traveling, such as air lifting, and lost dive gear in the event of an accident. Beyond that, having DAN is an insurance that they'll find you the right doctor to go to. Not every doctor knows exactly how to handle dive related injuries and going to one that does could be what saves your life if things go wrong.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

TLG James posted:

Did you buy it locally? I didn't see a spot to buy it on there.

Once it's back in stock, I'm planning on buying this and a soft strap as my primary night dive and cavern light with a couple of their smaller ones as backup.

http://www.piranhadivemfg.com/item/Piranha-Black-Star-350-LED-Light--Rechargeable-Battery-System-11632

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

I'm moving to Miami in early October. This should benefit my diving significantly. :parrot:

Well now we're definitely going to have to go diving sometime.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
I've never used it for stills, but I have a GoPro Hero 2 with the dive housing and it takes great video for the money.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Is that the stock housing? It looks blurry.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Yeah, I have a Hero2 and the GoPro dive housing. I don't have the LCD and I'm not really sure that I need it really. It drains battery like crazy and it's so wide angle that it's pretty hard not to really aim it right. If I were trying to shoot stills that would be different though. I'm using it solely for video.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
That contest makes me wish my camera battery didn't die right before missing the chance at an awesome photo. A buddy of mine found a rod and reel on a wreck, with the fish still attached! (we cut him free). That wasn't really the funny or cool part though. Just a bit down we also found a lawn chair. So we tried to get a photo of him sitting in the lawn chair holding the rod out, but my battery died right as we got to the chair. I was pretty bummed.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
I may take you up on that at some point depending on my schedule. I'm pretty busy over the next few months, but if a weekend ends up free I might be willing to make the venture down from Orlando. That or the next time I'm in Miami for work we can do a night dive or something.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Damnit. Cressi finally got back to my dive shop about my first stage that got damaged when I was in Key Largo and it wasn't just the yoke that bent, the housing got tweaked to. The cost for the service plus the parts is more than what the first stage replacement cost would be, which is $160. I have a spare really old Sherwood first stage, but it's essentially been out of commission for about a decade so I'm a bit hesitant to put it into use, especially because I was having a hard time finding a shop that would service it before I bought the Cressi setup.

So right now my main ideas are either bite the bullet and just pay the replacement cost for the same first stage, check around either craigslist or scubaboard and find someone selling a lightly used first stage or consider possibly upgrading my first and/or first and second stage. Time to do some looking around.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
Nitrox isn't really going to make your shallow dives any longer. Nitrox won't really make your dives any longer until you get to deeper depths I'd say in the 70+ foot range. Anything shallower and you're going to run out of gas before you hit your nitrogen limits. Beyond that the other big reason for Nitrox is to give yourself more of a cushion with your nitrogen limits to help reduce your chances of running into problems.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

MA-Horus posted:

Max depth on EANx32 is about 32 meters. As in, do not go deeper unless you wish oxygen toxicity on yourself. It's really most useful between 20-30 meters, drastically increases your downtime. I did my wreck diving certification on nitrox which gave me an additional 20 minutes at depth, great for practicing skills.

Sure, 32% is 32 meters, but you can get any mix from 21-40% with a Nitrox cert. When I dive Jupiter I get a 26%, 32% and 36% fill so I can vary my mix to optimize my depth and bottom time.

And yes, you have it backwards. Nitrogen builds up faster the deeper you go because the pressure on your body is what causes the nitrogen to dissipate from your body slower. The trouble you run into that as mentioned above is that any gas mix has a maximum operating depth which varies based on that gas mix. As your Nitrox mix gets higher that depth is shallower. Ideally you want to try to get a mix just barely higher than your max dive depth so you maximize your no decompression time. This is how rebreathers work they're constantly giving you the optimal gas mix so that you're continuously breathing a different mix as your depth varies and you max out your time. My buddy who dives a rebreather is always yelling at me for having to surface first.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

Well, sorta. The main problem is that you are taking in a much larger volume of gas at depth per breath. If you are at 33ft/10m, you are taking in twice the amount per breath that you would on the surface, 66ft 3 times, and so on. Then you have Henry's law, which for our purposes means that the body's tissues can absorb and hold more nitrogen the deeper we are. So the deeper we go, the more we on-gass. We're also off-gassing nitrogen into our blood stream, which then in turn escapes the body mostly through our lungs when we exhale. If you ascend to fast (or past your decompression ceiling if you're doing a deco dive), you are offgassing faster than you can expell the nitrogen and then those pesky bubbles form. That's a nutshell version of it.

That as well. I was trying not to get too into the full technical science behind it all and focus on when Nitrox is beneficial. I dive Nitrox pretty much exclusively now even if only for the benefit of the reduced risk of getting narc'd. My dive club did a big push to get people Nitrox certified to increase the safety of our group.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
There are some people who just can't get their ears to equalize, it's rare, but it does happen. What you may want to do is find a shop that does a discover scuba class where they let you try it out in a pool and you can practice equalizing techniques to see if you can get any of them to work for you before committing to the sport further.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
What you're burning off and what that soot is is a thin film caused by the manufacturing of the glass. It will wear off over time so if your mask has been used a lot already that film is probably gone, but a new mask has it on there. I was skeptical at first too, but I did this to the mask I bought a little while back and it has nearly zero fogging at all afterwards and I did the toothpaste trick prior which didn't help much.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

Missed this. :getin: PM me with details and we can probably make it happen. I can do a night dive pretty much any day of the week.

Awesome. I come down maybe once every month or two so I'll let you know when I come down next. I should be down in November some time.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

QuarkJets posted:

Some websites advertise "sports skins" that are supposed to be really thin (1mm or less) wetsuits that are just for UV protection but also provide aerodynamic advantages. If I got one of those instead of a wetsuit, would I get cold during a deep dive in Hawaii?

No one can answer this but you. Everyone's comfort range in the water is so broad that no one can really guess. Hell, SlicerDicer dives a dry suit in Hawaii. On dive boats in FL I regularly see people wearing nothing more than board shorts and a t-shirt standing next to someone in a full 5mm suit with a core warmer and hood.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
My work has me going to Miami for some meetings this week so I'm throwing my gear in my car with me so I can go do a night dive on the Spiegel Grove with Bishop. Hell yes.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Bishop posted:

Well I've definitely given people better dive experiences but it was an adventure at least. And everybody lived! It was good meeting you. Come back down when it's not night, 4-6ft seas, and horrible visibility :)

Also rip to my halcyon scout backup light, which is laying in the sand somewhere in about 130ft of water (i dropped it off the boat), battery still holding up for the next 6 hours or so.

I still had a good time regardless and it was cool to do a night dive again, even if we couldn't see worth a drat and tried to follow a crossover line down into 130 feet of nothing.

Edit: Uh oh, I just realized I left my one pair of dress pants and dress shoes that I packed on this trip in your bathroom. Guess I'm going shopping this morning before my meetings.

rockcity fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Nov 15, 2012

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004
From what I understand, they don't work well for a lot of the tech diving type of kicks that people use when overhead is a concern. They're also not great in current from what I understand so if you do a lot of drift diving they may not be for you. They're very easy on the ankles though. I dove a pair when I did the Epcot dive back in August and for no current and a simple kick, they were really comfortable. I dive way too much in current normally though.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

Crunkjuice posted:

They just don't have enough propulsion to deal with moderate current, and kind of suck for some kick styles which are necessary in wreck/cave/tech diving. For most diving, blade fins are the superior choice.

Split fins DO have some advantages though. They are a lot more comfortable on your joints than blade fins, so older people, people with injuries, lazy people (like me) like them a lot because they are easier to dive. I dive scubapro twin jets and i love them to death because i dive in no current fresh water for all of my diving. I don't need the extra power of blade fins, so why not enjoy the comfort of split fins?

It all depends on the type of diving you do, but blade fins are usually the best choice.

edit; Beaten by butthole rockcity apparently :(

Haha we even gave pretty much the exact pros and cons.

They make some blade fins that have soft middle sections so they blade cups the water more which helps solve the lack of power while also making the blade less stiff and more comfortable. I dive with Oceanic Vipers which have that feature. I think they call theirs a "power channel" or something dumb. I like them so far.

Edit: Here's a link to show what I'm talking about.
http://www.leisurepro.com/1/2/10278-oceanic-viper-open-heel-fins-black-regular.html

rockcity fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Dec 6, 2012

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

SlicerDicer posted:

suunto will generally keep you very safe too *NOT SAYING YOU WONT BEND LIKE PRETZEL*

Yeah, Suunto algorithms are 1% more conservative when calculating Nitrox. I have the mosquito which does that.

rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

SlicerDicer posted:

I am not sure I follow?

If you put in your nitrox percentage, the depths and NDLs that it calculates are actually one percent higher than the actual value from the standard nitrox tables. So if you put in 26%, it's going to calculate it like it's 27%.

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rockcity
Jan 16, 2004

SlicerDicer posted:

Thats kinda odd? But in OC mode my shearwater predator is more conservative than a suunto? I have noticed that at 30/85 Gradient Factor.

I dove 32% with my suunto and my predator few months back.

Yeah, I'm assuming they do it as a precaution. That being said, I just put in 1% lower than what I'm diving so it calculates it by the tables.

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