From where I sit, few folks in N FL use steel stages with the possible exception of those tiny steelies (20-30) for EAN100...
Re planning... is this the purpose for all the differing scenarios printed out from deco software??
Norm
I am told that the steel is still good for cave where it will get dropped off as Norm discusses. It will lie there real nicely until I get back.
It involves planning, planning, and yes... more planning.
That is the only steel stage that I have as well. As I said, twenty cubic feet or so would be fine for one or two dives, but the lack of refill ability in some locations means that I don't want to have refill my stage bottles there for multiple dives. Whitefish Point and Isle Royale in the Upper Peninsula have some some world class wreck diving, but no oxygen availability unless you bring it in. So, you maximize the O2 and Helium that you can bring up in these locations to avoid diving straight air.
And as for computer software and planning, I hand copy schedules off my VR3. It's tedious, but that way the schedules will agree (approximately) with my dive computer. I can hand calculate gas management numbers.
I was using my laptop for the gas management calculations, but got the bad news that my 1 1/2 old Dell laptop fried a motherboard and it will cost more than the computer is worth to replace it. I did not have a new laptop in the budget this year, so all have to say on that is "Dude.... don't buy a Dell laptop!" I will be without my laptop until I can replace it next year and I am not setting up my desktop in a hotel room everytime that I go diving, LOL.
So that option will have to work.
As well, I am using the larger bolt snaps on my stage bottles. Any kind of thick gloves make this necessary. I don't tend to hand them off as much of my actual diving of this type is solo. Once I got done with my Normoxic training, the instructor went to working with one the state's best known shipwreck hunters and I was his only student. He passed one other gentleman before me, but he teaches OW more than dives tech anymore.
As a result, I am often the only one in the groups that I have been diving with to use mixes of EAN50 or above to do my deco much less go to pure O2 at 20 ft. to do my deco. I am also the only diver on the boat using helium in my mix. This generally means "every man for himself" and some leapfrogging on the ascent line. In the times where this is not the case, I am more than capable of doing whatever I want with stage bottles as my normoxic instructor pushed that concept in my training. He is an active cave-diver and really promotes skills with stage bottles. One of our favorite (and practical tricks) was to finish our deco and hang the bottles on an equipment line at about ten feet in the water column. Then we can climb the boat unencumbered with gear and pull up our individual equipment lines before the boat leaves
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A person should be judged in this life not by the mistakes that they make nor by the number of them. Rather they are to be judged by their recovery from them.