I’m planning on doing a TDI Nitrox course with Diving Leisure London sometime early next year, and wondered if any other GLUG members would like to join me?

The course will cost £80 - less if I get several people interested. The course takes 1 day, is all theory (no winter diving required!), and qualifies you to dive with Nitrox mixes up to 40%.

(Explanation of Nitrox follows for any scuba newbies out there…)

Nitrox, also known as Enriched Air, or EANx, is primarily used to extend Divers’ No Decompression Limits (NDL). This can dramatically extend your dive time. For example, on air, the NDL for a dive to 24m is around 35 minutes (depending on which tables you’re using), whereas using 36% Nitrox, the NDL is increased to 60 minutes!

Of course, either the 60 minute Nitrox dive or the 35 minute Air dive mean that your body still ends up with the same amount of Nitrogen in it…which brings me to the second advantage of Nitrox:

For two divers, diving the same profile, the one breathing Nitrox will absorb significantly less Nitrogen during the dive than the one breathing Air. This means that whereas the Air diver may surface in a High Pressure group, the Nitrox diver will surface in a lower Pressure Group, and is therefore less likely to get Bent.

For long dive trips, where you might be diving 2 or 3, or even 4 times a day, this can make the difference between diving at or close to the limits, or being comfortably within them.

If you’re interested in signing up for the course, please contact me ASAP (GLUG Members, click the envelope at the top of this post when you’re logged in).

Neil.