Hi Steve, All they need to know is you are a diver and have progg of it, because you are not in the water it's fine for you to do the dive, i myself am a Sports diver limited to 35m but i went on the orignal outing with Jellybeanz to the pot and was thier doing the 50m dive. I think it's just a case of us as divers needing to know when theirs something happening with our ears and being aware we need to clear them, or at least that was the impression i got speaking to the guys. It was an intresting experiance and i will definalty be going again ! And plan to go on the next one ;D
In a chamber you need to clear your ears MUCH MORE often than you would underwater (all but constantly for the first 10m!). If someone is having difficulties they can stop the descent or even come up slightly (they had to do this on one of my treatments) for you to catchup. If one person is unable to equalise and decides to abort the dive, the chamber will have a second presurised section which they can bring you back in whilst the rest continue with their dive - during a treatment this section would be used to bring a doctor down to check up on you. Pretty sure that MDC's requires you do be a qualified diver (so fine with OW) , but I think other chambers (with different insurance parameters) will let non-divers do dry dives.
I did the dry dive at the York Diver Training College with my sons (OW and AOW) and I'm pretty sure you didn't need to be qualified, just healthy and able to clear. They had comms from inside the chamber so anyone with clearing issues could shout out and they'd stop immediately. They'd then ascend a metre or two and try again. If you couldn't clear then, it would have been out of the chamber time. They also told us it was a "loggable" dive. Yup, you're not swimming and not getting wet, but you're effectively going to depth under instruction, learning about being narc'ed etc. Cheers, Mark
I am that person, sigh. Though they did not give me much choice about it. I couldn't follow the profile they needed to complete the dive safely, and was summarily ejected. Worse than big brother I had to be locked out at round 18 meters. If you struggle with your ears, the dive profile is quite challenging. Us at the crappy end of the Eustachian tube department should think hard and discuss with the chamber crew before taking it on. It was invaluable experience though, chamber in Preston. I still have the T shirt Harry
The T shirt reads Dry Dive 45 Hutton Hyperbaric Centre Front says Lancashire & Cumbria Joint Underwater Search Unit Google finds nothing with that reference, so it may not exist any more. It has to be late 80's early 90's when I did that dry dive. My logbooks for then are rather sparse, some sod stole my car with diving kit and my logbooks in it. I got the car back eventually, but the kit and logs never surfaced. Harry
We all went up as a gang in a minibus, most of the club did the dive. Preston was about as good as my navigation allows, I was a passenger and a long way away from Nantwich. I see from Google maps a Hutton somewhat west and a little south of Preston, is that likely to be the place? Harry
