Alright, so I usually do 200ft OC dives on 18/45 with 20 to 30 minute bottom times then ride an explorer up using 36 and 80, sometimes 100 if the boat has it. I'm working my way deeper and have been told I need to start using helium in my deco mixes. Sounds good, just wanted to start a huge thread and see what everybody else is doing and why. Readyyyyy............GO! >
; nice post corndog......... ready set go..... call me soon.
joe
maxfactor
While I haven't been diving OC trimix in several years, I can say that I don't switch off helium when ascending on CCR. There are a couple reasons I believe this is a good practice. Keeping helium in your mix is important in avoiding inner ear DCS (aka isobaric counter diffusion). While not immediately life threatening itself, it can cause dizziness, vertigo, even vomiting (not good while on deco!). The other reason is that it's becoming more evident that helium offgases faster than earlier models initially predicted. I feel much better (more awake) after a dive where I use helium all the way to the surface than on past dives utilizing more N2 in my mixes. The downside of this is that many of the deco models still in use today heavily penalize you for not getting off the helium. :
(good thing the Explorer is not one of them!!) Finally, for CCR anyways, it's actually cheaper for me to stay on my helium mix than it would be to switch to another gas on ascent. ;D
I've been running plans on V-Planner an get heavily penalyzed for using helium on deco. Guys on the deco stop say the use helium but don't tell their computers/planners. Your saying the explorer won't beat me up for staying on He? ;D
To some extent it does, but not nearly as much as other profiles I've compared it to. The VR3 is probably the worst. I've had my buddies tell their VR3 that they're switching to air at 200 ft (even though they don't actually switch) while I keep my Explorer on my bottom gas. I still get out of the water faster and feel great!!