The problem with flying is the amount of change in pressure and how fast it happens.Sounder wrote:Wow. I figured you'd spent the night or something. I'm really interested in the flying after diving thing. I understand that the rule of 24 hours (air) and 18 hours (nitrox) is to cater to the lowest common denominator, but 3 hours doesn't seem very long.
If you'd had the option to fly later, would you have? What kind of altitute do you think you were at (assuming you were in a non-pressurized plane). I guess if you weren't that high then flying concerns aren't as much of an issue.
Could you expand on this a bit? Maybe John could weigh in too? I'm interested.
When you have been on a dive or dives at sea level and you are loaded up with nitrogen, jumping into an airplane that ends up with a pressurized cabin altitude of 6-8,000 feet or driving a car over a high altitude pass, can be a problem.
As soon as you go up in altitude with less pressure, the nitrogen will try and leave your body at a greater rate which could be to fast for your body to handle and cause DCS.
The decompression tables that we use when diving are set up in such a way that the nitrogen is leaving or body at a rate that should not cause DCS.
I live at at about a 600 ft elevation and my body was not off-gassing any nitrogen when I started this trip to the lake( I was equalized).
We flew up to 4,500 ft to get into the lake. As soon as we were higher than 600 ft, my body started off-gassing nitrogen, which was good. I was at the lake elevation for over 3 hrs before I got into the water. During that 3 hrs my body continued to adjust my nitrogen to that elevation.
My dive plan and computer were set up to allow for this change in pressure and the rate of nitrogen off-gassing.
After my dives, I was out of the water for another 3 hrs at the 3,000 ft altitude which gave me additional time to off-gas before flying out.
The key to what I did was that the airplane only had to climb up another 500 ft (to 3,500 ft) to get out of the lake. At that point it was all down hill to Monroe Airport. As soon as I dropped below 3,000 ft, the additional pressure actually helped to slow down my nitrogen off-gassing which is a good thing. It worked exactly the opposite as if I went up in altitude (not good).
I hope this explains what I did and why. This type of thing can be done with minimum risk if you plan it properly, follow your plan and be as conservative as possible.
and there is Work Money 
, eh?
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