Failure to Analyze at All
Have you heard about the new magic tank decals? They’re huge (‘must cost at least twenty bucks each), and make you look like a “real” tech diver. Apparently, how they work is this:
You put the decal on your tank and then write, in permanent marker, the FO2 and MOD of the mix you want the cylinder to have for all eternity. Something like EAN50 and MOD 70 (of course, the actual MOD for EAN50 is closer to 73 feet — but what’s a few feet among friends?). Now all you have to do is take the cylinder to your neighborhood gas blender and, no matter what he or she actually puts in the cylinder, it will be magically transformed into the mix you put on the big expensive decal.
Isn’t that amazing? And how do I know such magical decals really exist? They must. After all, I see numerous divers try to grab their deco bottles from our fill station without bothering to analyze the mix or record their findings in our fill station log. Certainly these divers would not put their life at risk by failing to analyze unless their tank markings truly possessed magical powers. I mean, it’s not as though they are stupid. Or lazy. Or both.
As anyone who has ever partial-pressure blended gas knows, if you manage to hit your target FO2 within ±1 percent (especially with those tiny little deco bottles) it’s not science. Or physics. Or chemistry. It’s freakin’ VooDoo.
Even when you have the luxury of filling with premixed gas blends, there are numerous factors that affect final cylinder content — such as filling on top of leftover gas that was not accurately analyzed or labeled. Nevertheless, too many divers seem perfectly willing to assume that the mix they asked for is what they got.
That kind of Stupid is spelled with a capital S.
::: TOP ::: SUBSCRIBE ::: CONTACT US ::: ABOUT US :::