RJP's question about timing is a good one, I think. I think that, for most AOW classes, the person with 5 months of experience would find the class disappointing. (Bob Bailey's class is an exception!). BUT . . . the person who goes right out of OW and starts diving may, five months later, have solidified a whole MESS of bad habits (hand swimming, inefficient kicking technique) that will be hard to break. The person who did the additional five dives at the beginning might have had those tendencies extinguished, and after five months of diving, might be quite a bit better.
In Puget Sound, it is simply not POSSIBLE to create a polished diver in four OW dives. I would love to sell a combined OW/AOW class with nine dives, at the end of which I think most people would actually be pretty well prepared to be independent divers here. We did such a class a number of years ago, with a group of high school students, and it was a blast.
