Hi Robert,

> On 22 Mar 2022, at 18:14, Robert.Helling <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Attila,
> 
> thanks a lot for your feedback!

No problem,

> 
>> On 22. Mar 2022, at 07:33, Attilla de Groot via subsurface 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I have been planning my hypoxic dives for this week and I have some 
>> feedback/questions around this.
>> 
>> - In the planner there are IBCD warnings for my 80 and 100m dives, while we 
>> did account for it with the gas switches. According to the documentation the 
>> “rule of 5th” is used to base these warnings on. According to my instructor 
>> this was a rule that was use in the past, but these days the BSAC 
>> recommendation is followed in the tech diving community:
>> 
>>> The British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) recommends that divers allow for a maximum 
>>> of 0.5 bar difference in PN2 at the point of the gas switch. According to 
>>> former BSAC Tech lead Mike Rowley, “The recommendation isn’t an absolute 
>>> but a flexible advisory value so a 0.7 bar differential isn’t going to 
>>> bring the Sword of Damocles down on you.”
>> 
>> 
>> GUE has a different approach where they wouldn’t switch to EAN50 (not 
>> practical imho), but in their explanation 
>> (https://gue.com/blog/isobaric-counterdiffusion-in-the-real-world/) they do 
>> refer to the above. Perhaps it would be an idea to update the warning based 
>> on the BSAC recommendation of 0.5, since it seems to be more up to date than 
>> the “rule of 5th” (and also more practical).
> 
> I think the whole isobaric counter diffusion is not really well understood 
> and adding yet another criterium used by one agency (which does not sound too 
> well motivated to me anyways) does not help much. Maybe we could add this one 
> day in the future but I don't think it has much practical relevance. Note 
> that Subsurface not only implements the rule of fifth but also does an actual 
> check if more N2 is entering the body than He is leaving (it does it in the 
> deco calculation). But this triggers at unexpected times. I have written 
> about this here:
> 
> https://thetheoreticaldiver.org/wordpress/index.php/tag/icd/

I wasn’t suggesting to add a criterium from a single agency. Exactly because of 
the reason that you mentioned. However, GUE does have nice blogs with good 
references. In this case it is a recommendation from BSAC that is neutral in 
relation to GUE or any other org. As said, the “5th rule” from what I 
understand is outdated. Seems logically to update Subsurface according to 
recent research on the topic.

> 
>> 
>> - The planner gives the option to set the last stop to 6m or not (then it 
>> becomes 3m). Multideco has an option where you could provide the depth 
>> manually if not 6m. This would be practical to have when doing deco with 
>> Oxygen. Most computers will give warnings when passing a PO2 of 1.6 and also 
>> warnings when not staying at 6m. What I understand is that it is common 
>> practice to do the last deco stop at 4 of 5 meter (after the 6m stop is 
>> finished). This would be more practical than 3m (certainly in open water), 
>> but it would result in a bit more gas usage that I would like to plan for.
>> 
> I am hesitant to add yet another adjustable parameter. The Subsurface user 
> interface and the planner in particular is already quite baroque and it is 
> very easy to get lost. Note that from a deco point of view, when you are 
> doing o2 deco, the depth doesn't make any difference for the off gassing 
> since at any depth the intert gas ambient pressure is 0 with O2. So, if you 
> plan with a 3m last stop, you can as well spend it at 5m without any change 
> to your deco schedule (except the final ascent takes a bit longer).

That does make sense. Having a “last stop depth” variable (default 6) seemed a 
small change to me.

>> - It is unclear to me when working with the planner and the descent. It is 
>> possible to set a descent rate, but that only seems to be applicable for the 
>> first stop (assuming “drop to first depth” has been enabled). In most dives 
>> you would need to account for work to be done when descending (e.g S-drill, 
>> placing cookies, running lines etc.). In multideco (not using it myself) the 
>> descent is calculated for every “step” during the descent. Ideally, I would 
>> want to plan a dive to 100m and need the following stops:
>> 
>> - 5m (S-drill)
>> - 21m (staging EAN 50 tank)
>> - 40m (placing cooking)
>> - 50m (switch to back gas)
>> etc..
>> 
>> Then I would only have to enter those depths and time I want to stay there. 
>> Subsurface would then add the descent time to get to the given depth.
> 
> Indeed, the only descend that the planner automatically does for you is the 
> initial one to the first depth. All the others have to be done manually.

Wouldn’t it be useful to add something for all other stops as well given the 
use-case I mentioned?

>> - In the plan I also get the warning: "  — Warning: required minimum gas for 
>> ascent already exceeding start pressure of cylinder!”. This is for the 
>> intermediate gas I’m using to prevent a IBCD. It is a nearly full tank and 
>> not using much according to the planner. Not sure what this warning is based 
>> on.
> 
> The planner does a minimum gas calculation for the end of the last manually 
> entered segment (why do you enter this last segment manually and don't set a 
> switch depth and let the planner handle it for you?). It calculates the the 
> gas you need if at the end of that segment you stay at that depth the 
> "problem solving time" and then do the ascent but all with a SAC increased by 
> the "SAC factor" (by default 4 as it should include gas sharing and both 
> divers have a double SAC rate due to stress).  For your 22/40 gas, you 
> regularly use 63 bar in the ascent, multiply that by 4 and that is already 
> more than what you started with.

Ok, good to know this. I should have added the 22/40 with a deco stop at 40m.

>> - For training and certification is is needed to make backup runtables for 
>> failure scenarios (e.g loosing a gas or going deeper than planned). Perhaps 
>> it would be an feasible to have variables to do this and store the RTs for 
>> the failure scenarios.
> 
> This has been discussed before and it has been found that to cater 
> everybody's different needs would lead to an explosion of further user 
> controlable parameters. There is some support for such planning though: You 
> can mark a gas in the gas table as "Not used" by clicking in the last column. 
> This allows you to quickly simulate gas failures. And you can turn on 
> "Display plan variations" which allows you to compute changes in total 
> runtime for different last depths and/or times of the last segement (assumend 
> to be the bottom time). It's only the variation of the total runtime and you 
> have to manually distribute it over the different stop depths but I think 
> with a little bit of experience this can easily be done within the error 
> margins all these calculations have anyways.


That is exactly what I’m doing now, luckily I’m not in certifications anymore 
and with two tri-mix computers I don’t have to write down all the failure 
scenarios anymore. So a problam for someone else and I get that you don’t want 
to clutter the interface anymore than necessary.


— Attilla

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