Yep - and I completely agree with you... As I said before, ANYTHING that gets you in the water and gets you diving is a good thing, so in that regard your BC is a fine piece of gear. I don't blame you for not regretting the BC purchase - it's got you diving, and it's something that your wife or your next dive buddy can use, too. I have four or five of them sitting around my garage at the moment, ready for the countless friends of mine who say to me, "Hey, can you show me how to dive?" I'm not an instructor (and don't want to be - God help those poor souls), but I am a PADI Divemaster - which means that it's politically correct for me to put a BC and tank on a friend and let them see what it's like to breathe underwater in my pool. You know, as if I was worried about political correctness...
Anyway, you'll still find uses for your BC, for sure, so use the heck out of it. Whenever one is given to me, I either hang it up in the garage for a buddy or strip it of it's usable parts (which then go into the parts bin) and ditch the faded, blown bladders and no-longer-sticky Velcro cummerbund. Some of them have plastic backplates in them (complete with 1" crotch strap attachments) that can be mildly useful for children, too.
What you're finding about your LDS is probably completely true - and I'm not surprised. In fact, many of them have never even heard of such a thing. I'm surprised if I DON'T get funny looks when I visit a dive shop when I'm out of town (none here). Asking a dive shop geek about BP/wings is kinda like asking a salesman at your local Toyota dealer if he knows what a 12-bolt posi is... Or asking a Buick salesman if he knows the difference between a turbocharger and a supercharger. Despite what appearances are, the LDS is largely educated about diving through manufacturer's reps... In other words, by Scubapro or AquaLung or Cressi or whatever line they carry - who's major responsibility is to introduce and promote their new lineup of BC's. Talk to those who get their dive education from DIVING, however, and you'll find a much different story - one that is rooted in practicality, reliability, ruggedness, dependability, and performance. Those who obtain their education from diving, and not from the people selling the product, are typically slow to embrace new technology, while those interested in selling product embrace it even in the face of the complete failure of a new product (see the Mares HUB for example).
...So congratulations. You've just found the scuba equivalent of the difference between car guys and truck guys... Harley guys and crotch rocket guys... Rock and roll guys and techno guys... You get the idea.
What I find really entertaining is that every year, there's much fanfare about some new, improved incredible thingamabob that if you dive without, you're gonna die. Not to imply that technology is pointless (it's not), but c'mon, man... If there was really an improvement on something EVERY year, then either we started in the beginning with stuff that didn't work at all, or we're using stuff today that is so insanely great that it'll take you to the moon and back while doing your laundry, filling your bank account, and taking care of your "manly needs" at the same time. It's just not the case.
Heck, just over the past five years, I've read so much about fins being "faster, with less effort" that you'd swear if you just put them on, they'll take you to France and back with one single kick. It's all marketing hype, my friend. The next time someone tells you that "these fins are faster" or "they require less effort," ask them, "as compared to what?" Then ask them to see the data that backs up that claim... And I don't mean a test by some entity that's being paid by the manufacturer of the fins tested.
Look, the only "effortless" movement you're going to get underwater is a drift dive or scooter dive. The latter, you can control, but is going to cost you a couple grand for the good ones or a couple hundred for the disposable ones. There simply isn't any magic out there, other than that which is in the mind of the marketing guru that writes the ads.
...Who is being paid by the company that invented a solution to a problem that didn't exist in the first place... And then "educates" the LDS... Who gives that information to you. A BP/wing? No way. If the LDS began carrying them (there are a few in N. FL), then what would they do next year - make a bigger, better, improved BP/wing? I mean, there'd be nothing more to sell.
...And heck, they'd sell ONE BP/wing, and never see the customer again... He'd be diving and only come back once every couple of years to get some more webbing for $12. It'd be retail suicide.
Do I seem a bit embittered? Do I seem a tad cynical? I don't mean to sound that way... But you're talking to a guy that's been in this industry - as a buyer, not a seller - for decades. Every year they pitch stuff to me and try to get me to spend thousands on all-new equipment, which MIGHT be justified if it was better than the stuff I already have. They just don't get it. Instead they waste my time and theirs and come up with some new-fangled gizmo that costs me time (research), money (price of the item), and then money again when it fails on the job and I can't get my $1,000 job done on time, tarnishing my reputation and frustrating my clients and divers. And just as soon as supply-and-demand and lack of profits (they usually blame "the internet") makes the dive shop close (and I finally get some silence from the "this is better!" crowd), up pops a new dive shop with a new dive shop owner that got certified last week and fell in love with diving and decided to open up a shop... And I get to explain it all over again to him.
If I see one more new-fangled "quick release" heel strap for a set of fins come across my desk, I'm gonna shoot someone with my powerhead. The very nature of them - plastic, rubber, clips, and "undo quickly" mindset is completely flawed. I have a set of metal spring-heels on my Jets that haven't failed once in about five year's of heavy abuse... Why does everyone keep trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with some piece-of-crap plastic thingie? Ugh.
Okay - your Gekko... Nice computer. I wear a Suunto D6 on my wrist everywhere I go, whether I'm diving or not. I like the durability of the glass face over plastic, and find it especially useful to download profiles so that I can see everything on my computer. In fact, the D6 actually shows a graph of the dive without having to download it in the first place. I have found this to be immesely useful information, helping me to "tune" my ascent rates and overall profile.
I also find the backlighting fantastic, the numbers very legible underwater, and that it provides a ton of useful information while diving - including water temp (helps me to make decisions about exposure protection for the next day's dives), current depth, and yes, I even use the built-in compass. I have finally bagged my Suunto SK-7 compass, although I think I'll end up permenantly mounting it on one of my scooters.
I like computers - I was a systems admin before I was a professional diver. Computers and I get along very well, and I completely love my D6. However...
(You knew there'd be a "however," right?)
You shouldn't be using one to figure your NDL. That means, flip it into guage mode (you can't do that on your Gekko, although I hear that there's a software mod you can do) so that it displays time and depth, and that's it. There's three reasons why you - Tim - should not be using one to judge when it's time to ascend:
1. You are going to be getting into cave diving - this, depending on how far you get into it, will require multiple gas mixes, rebreathers, and other fancy equipment that a computer will not be able to take into account... So it'll tell you you're bent when you aren't, because there's factors that the computer isn't able to compensate for. Thus, the piece of equipment that you've spent so much money on will quickly become worthless - in fact, dangerous, if you begin to believe it underwater - during your extended dives. I know you're not doing that now, but don't even get used to it.
2. Computers - even those that are air integrated - can not account for sudden changes in situations. For example, if you are diving an air integrated computer at 100' and it tells you that you've got 8 minutes of NDL and 12 minutes of gas left, then you'll stay for another 5 minutes, right? What happens when your buddy is suddenly out of air at the four minute mark? Guess what... You don't have enough gas for both of you to return to the surface. What happens when one of those cool regs that you love so much suddenly begin to freeflow? Guess what... Your computer was right, but not any more... Suddenly, things have changed... And you're not prepared to handle them because you weren't thinking for yourself - you were letting the computer think for you.
3. You need to REALLY familiarize yourself with the "feel" of your NDLs that are being taught to you at the moment, and you need to learn how a dive "feels" so that the whole thing can become intuitive to you. Having a computer do it all for you will prevent this growth. It's especially important if you're going to advance in your diving - not so much so if you're going to end up just another once-a-year vacation diver in the Florida Keys.
Here's another thing to think about: What happens when you go diving with your buddy, and on your ascent from an 80' dive, his computer says that he's got to do a "safety stop" at 50', but yours says that if you stay there, you're over your NDL? If he's got 800 psi and you've got 1100, what do you do?
What do you do if you've only got 350 psi? Should your answer be different since you're so low on gas?
Whose computer do you believe? What do you do about your gas situation? At what point do you call the Coast Guard?
Okay, that last one isn't a serious question. But I do want you to get into thinking about this stuff, and beleive me, you'll see it when you're actually doing your diving. I applaud the fact that you want to increase your safety margin by getting a dive computer, but that's not what increases your safety margin... What increases your safety margin is to be more conservative than you would be otherwise, which is independent of whether you're wearing a computer. In fact, I'd be so bold as to tell you that if you see that you've still got 3 minutes of NDL left on your computer, you're more inclined to believe it and stay - which is to say that a computer is likely more apt to make you decide to take it to the ragged edge.
Now, consider this scenario instead: You save the few hundred bucks (times two, since she'll have to have one too) and instead get yourself a BP/wing and learn the tables by heart. You'd be really surprised how easy it is. Here, I'll start it for you:
1st dive of the day, use the Rule of 120 - this is an old Navy Diver addage: Depth + time = 120. For example, at 80 feet, you've got 40 minutes. At 100 feet, you've got 20 minutes. At 60 feet, you've got 60 minutes. Get it? Now go compare that to your tables or wheel - you'll see that the numbers are off just a touch, but by surprisingly little. That's because PADI added in a "safety margin" of their own. They were simply being conservative. The problem is that if you add in your own conservatism (a good idea, right?) now you're so super-conservative that you're worried about nothing - or cutting your dive short, which in my case means money, too.
If you graph the two out (time on X axis and depth on Y axis), you'll also find out that the "Rule of 120" is a straight line, whereas the PADI tables are actually curved a little - making PADI's tables more conservative in the middle, but more liberal at the ends. I'm not telling you that you shouldn't practice the PADI tables and instead use the Rule of 120... I'm telling you that there's a close correlation, and if you see how the two of them look similar, you'll be much more familiar with what you can and can't do when it comes to your NDLs (which aren't a limit anyway - you'll learn that later and wonder why you even considered a dive computer that blinked a limit at you when there's not really a limit there).
For example, now that you're thinking about the Rule of 120, when you hear someone tell you that they dove to 110 feet and stayed there for 30 minutes, you'll know that they're pulling your leg unless they were doing staged deco on their asent. When someone tells you that they dove to 60 minutes and were past their NDL in 22 minutes, you'll know that something's really wrong with the story. And when you're at 90 feet and your computer floods, you'll know that you've got about 30 minutes to get out of there before things really get out of hand.
Oh yeah - don't forget that the Rule of 120 only works for the FIRST dive of your day. For subsequent dives, give yourself a one-hour surface interval between dives, and dive a Rule of 110 instead. See how that compares to your tables or wheel... Then ask yourself why they made this so darned hard in class... Or why you need to drop hundreds of valuable dollars (which could be spent on gear that you actually need) on a computer... Or why, even after owning a computer, you were thinking about buying ANOTHER one with air integration.
No, man... What you need is a bottom timer and a pressure guage and a lot of thinking for right now. Later, if you're willing to have the discipline to pop it into guage mode, consider something nicer... But for now, master the basics.
BTW, I can't believe that you bought a computer before you bought a wetsuit. :eek1: Even worse, I can't believe that the LDS encouraged that... What, are you going to wear the computer in the shower or something? What good does it do you if you can't get in the water?
Okay, enough for one day.
No wonder they gave you a free air fill or two... You bought a computer.
