Dale sounds like he had his head on straight. When I got my first deck spot I had maybe 20 hours logged and the guy who hired me flat out said he didn't care about the number, he cared that I showed up 30 minutes early every day that week and had my mask defogged before anyone asked. The old timers watch how you handle the small stuff way more than they watch your log book. Clean gear, boots by the door, asking questions instead of pretending you know it all, that is what gets your name passed around. Chamber time comes when it comes, but nobody wants to train a guy who already thinks he is done learning.

I ran HP5 at 1:100 for an hour once and got the same mush you're describing. Shadows were straight up gray, no punch at all, and I was metering at 400. The one thing that helped was upping my agitation to two slow turns every five minutes instead of standing it still the whole time. Still flat though, so I went back to 1:50 with HC-110 and never looked back.