Sentinel Training, Sentinel Options

[Phillip]

Hi,

I have been diving for 10 years and have been an OC Instructor for three years. I am getting a Sentinel Level 3 unit in February and wanted to kow if anbody out there had any insight into the course or any comments on the unit itself ? I am not trimix qualified so have bought the unit primarily for extended duration and not depth at the moment but hopefully will go on to do trimix in the future on it. I have been doing extended range diving for about 8 years on twin 12's and stages and am ready to start CC divng. Was this the best unit to get?

[Rob Dobson]

So you are doing Mod 1 on a Sentinal? Which instructor are you going with?

I spent ages choosing my unit when I went down the CCR route and I went with a COPIS Meg (mCCR). I was very tempted by the rEVO 2 and I would still like one as a second unit. The Boris and the YBOD were the first units that I decided against for a variety of reasons but the Sentinal wasn't available at the time. I certainly wouldn't touch the VR3/VRx computers with a barge pole...

Enjoy the course and let us know how you get on with the unit.

[Phillip]

So you are doing Mod 1 on a Sentinal? Which instructor are you going with?

I spent ages choosing my unit when I went down the CCR route and I went with a COPIS Meg (mCCR). I was very tempted by the rEVO 2 and I would still like one as a second unit. The Boris and the YBOD were the first units that I decided against for a variety of reasons but the Sentinal wasn't available at the time. I certainly wouldn't touch the VR3/VRx computers with a barge pole...

Enjoy the course and let us know how you get on with the unit.

I start the course in Feb for the Mod 1 phase and am doingit with Phil Short. Why wont you touch the VR3/VRX computers?

[Simon A]

Why wont you touch the VR3/VRX computers?

I'm not Rob but following on from discussions I've had with him:-
Rob doesn't like the VR3/VRX computers because they use proprietry deco algorithms that have not been published or peer reviewed in the scientific community. He prefers to dive an algorithm that has been published and peer reviewed and that he can dig through the literature and find out exactly what assumptions it's making for him.

IMHO the VR3 used to be the bees knees as a technical diving computer, but now there are competing products out there and there are better thought out and more intuitive menu systems. I recently replaced my VR3 with an OSTC which has a much nicer screen, and I took it out the box and set it up to go CCR diving (with bailout gases) in 5 min without having to refer to the manual. If I'd tried that with the VR3 I'd still be sitting on the sofa trying to figure it out. All that from a computer which cost me just over £500 enabled for CC trimix deco.
HTH
Simon A

[Rob Dobson]

Yep Simon has pretty much summed up my feelings in the VR3/VRx, but I also feel that the UI is truly awful, the buttons are flaky and that after years of these criticisms being levelled at the unit the response was to give it a colour screen. WTF was that about?

I own an OSTC (excellent GF computer, oLED screen), an X1 (V-Planner live VPM-B, oLED screen) and a Shearwater Pursuit (GF). All them are IMO much better computers than the either the VR3 or the VRx and all of them can do online deco for CCR and all of them are based on deco algorithms which are in the public domain.

[Aquaman]

Hi,

I have been diving for 10 years and have been an OC Instructor for three years. I am getting a Sentinel Level 3 unit in February and wanted to kow if anbody out there had any insight into the course or any comments on the unit itself ? I am not trimix qualified so have bought the unit primarily for extended duration and not depth at the moment but hopefully will go on to do trimix in the future on it. I have been doing extended range diving for about 8 years on twin 12's and stages and am ready to start CC divng. Was this the best unit to get?

How did the course go and how are you getting on with your unit?

Having done a few dives along side Sentinels they certainly look solidly built bit of kit. The buzzers are loud enough to alert everyone in the group that the Sentinel is alarming. Not sure if this is a life saving feature or a source of endless annoyance!