Diving Compass

[MXGratefulDiver]

My AOW class included a nav dive. It consisted of swimming a square with 15 kicks per side. You are supposed to end up near the instructor, I ended up about 10 feet away but this was off West Palm with the current. I was underwhelmed to say the least. Like you I was familiar with land navigation and this AOW dive was a complete waste of time. I can't imagine what a whole course would consist of. I suppose you could learn to calibrate your kicks like the SEALs do but I suspect that might take a bit more time in to water to acquire the skill than a couple of dives.

I don't teach the fin kicks method of navigation in my AOW class because nobody's ever going to dive that way ... (whoever told you that Navy Seals use calibrated fin kicks is FoS). I teach a method called "mental mapping", where you create a mental image of where you're going as you progress through the dive, relative to your starting point. I use a series of six little plastic flags stuck into the bottom. Each flag has a heading to the next flag. The last flag just says "Home" ... which indicates that you should at that point make your way back to the buoy. The course takes about 20 minutes, and you use compass, depth gauge, bottom timer, and visual clues to find your way around ... because in the real world, that's how you dive.

The only place I use fin kicks in my curriculum is during the Search and Recovery pattern known as an expanding box ... because in the real world, that's about the only practical application I've ever found for that particular technique.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added April 21st, 2014 at 04:39 AM ----------

The post stated agesilaus did the Nav Dive in AOW not The Navigation Course. They are very different. One is just a dive the other is actually a course.

... the exercise as he described it still didn't really teach him anything ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added April 21st, 2014 at 04:40 AM ----------

Another feature I value is the phosphorescence for night diving. Can you comment on this for the two compasses.

Both of them have it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)