DonnyGreen
Registered
For those of you in the Lake Michigan area who are looking to step over to "The Dark Side" (tech diving), are considering diving doubles, or just want to greatly improve your dive skills, I would highly recommend that you look up Duane (ppo2_diver) and take this (ANY) course from him BEFORE you invest in gear and BEFORE you invest in actual tech classes. Me and two of my buddies took the course to learn how to properly dive doubles and to see where we really needed to work on our dive skills, or "years of bad habits" as Duane kindly terms it.
Duane's Intro to Tech class is very demanding. Let me restate this....Duane's (reffered to as DJ from here on out) Intro to Tech class is VERY DEMANDING. This is not your run of the mill everything is lookin' good, and here's your C-card - enjoy diving type class. Granted, everyone who takes the class gets the card (correct me if I'm wrong DJ), but the card is worthless. It is more of a memento than anything else. The knowledge you gain from this course is invaluable. DJ videotapes your class and sends you a copy, which is a huge learning too. DJ also gives you an honest evaluation of your skills, and I'm talking basic skills (read the class log below). Skills that you learn in OW as well as some new techniques. The class deals with the 3 Cs (Control, Competence, and Comfort) and the 3 Es (Education, Equipment, and Experience), perfecting skills, buddy awareness, dive planning etc. This particular class had a group of three from the Indianapolis area who dive together frequently, one is an AI, one a DM and me, a DM candidate as well as another guy. None of us are new to diving, but we all were shown how poorly we were executing skills and left the class with new knowledge and skills to put into practice for the next few months.
So, here is the rundown of MY class
Dive One
Started with about 3 hours of class work, all a piece of cake: basic skills (buoyancy, trim, balance, kicking, and breathing), the 3 "C's", (Competence, Control, Comfort) the 3 "E's" (Education, Equipment, Experience), and gear configurations. We get into the water to do the 5 basic skills and practice our kicks. Sounds like a piece of cake. BUT, all skills are to be done in a horizontal position while maintaining + or - 3' (+ or minus 5 for recreational divers) in the water column. OK, sounds a bit harder. Come to find out, my version of the "frog" is garbage, my modified frog is only slightly better. My bicycle kick makes me feel like a complete idiot and my backwards kick, even though I actually go backwards, is once again crap. About the only one I get even an "it was OK" on is my modified flutter kick, which is what I use most after a proper flutter. OK, that is outta the way, now on to the 5 basics. No real problems here except we all were probably + or - 5' in the water column and most of the time at a 45° angle. End dive one with the comment from DJ that ...."I like to start off with the positive...you weren't the worst class I've ever had". At least we've got that going for us.
Dive Two
We go down to do our valve drills...oh boy! As with the first dive, we are working on a platform at ~20'. Viz is about 20-25' and water is roughly 70°F. I am wearing just my Under Armor and a dry suit for both dives 1 & 2. I have on a new SS back plate with brand spanking new webbing, this seriously puts a damper on my mobility, but hey, I can still reach those valves. So I am second to do the drill. I mess up trying to clip off my primary and blow trim/buoyancy and bounce off the platform. I regain control and spit out my back up, recover my primary...only to realize I still have the primary clipped off. I manage to get the primary in my mouth, but again blow buoyancy, trim, and hit the deck... Duane gives me his primary and fixes the problem and I start the drill over. I have problems reaching the left post and blow buoyancy/trim a third (or fourth, or fith) time <sigh> and limp my way through the remainder of the drill. The rest of the team completes the drill, making me feel only slightly better about my performance and we go on a tour of the quarry. Let me tell you, Duane can frog kick like nobodies business. It was helpful to watch how the frog should be done for 20 minutes or so. We surface and again get "you weren't the worst class I've ever had" as our "positive reinforcement.
We break and head back to shore to talk about the next days events.
We review Decompression Theory, buddy awareness, a good dive plan, SAC's, RMV's, tank factors, ect...no problem for divers with our certifications. However, we have to get in the water
Dive One
We are going to ~50' to shoot some bags and practice ascents. My buddy is wearing a new set of 5th Element unders...very nice, but never seen water. I am putting on my old (and eye watering...they need a bath) Pinnacle 200g Thinsulates. I make Duane aware that I am in the new SS BP and do not know how I will be weighted with the 200grams on. He is cool with that since we will be doing weighting after we finish this dive. We are really focusing on pre-dive checks now. We do our check (sans weight check) and swim out to the buoy. We cover the dive plan and give the go. Everyone descends but my buddy and I. To my relief, he is also unable to descend, as well...at least I'm not alone. We give each other the obligatory eye roll and middle finger and continue to fight to get down. We end up making our way back to the buoy line and my buddy gets down using the line. I keep trying, but by this time, I am pretty winded. I have my venturi tuned all the way down and am sucking for air and am completely pissed. I decide to take a breather at the surface and gather my composure before giving it another go. I can barley make out my buddys tanks underwater and decide that I am gonna wait for him to ascend to meet up with me again and tell him I need to get more weight. There is no way I'm gonna be able to hang around while we all shoot bags (5 total) and then try free ascents with no mask not controlled anyway. He never comes up, so I decide, screw it...I'm gonna cork from 50' and like it. I fight my way down to 41'....no air in my bladder or my dry suit...OUCH...but I'm finally neutral. Duane gives me the universal "***"...and I try to hand signal that I am light; its not working so I have to use my slate. He gives me the nod and the bag. I bounce off the bottom while I shoot the bag and pass it to my buddy, he does the same (he's in the same boat...no air in either space and riding a thin line between neutral buoyancy and an elevator ride to the surface) and we get the buddy up and thumb the dive from Duane. We work our way back to the line and start our ascent. We are both fighting the whole way up to keep a controlled ascent. We have a safety stop at 20' and surface completely exhausted and extremely pissed. We let eah other know how bad tehy suck and make the long surface swim back to the dock and get our weighting right. Duane does not say a word about our folly. His silence was worse than hearing you werent the worse class Ive had we knew we screwed up.
Dive Two
This dive is our controlled descent/ascent dive...30 seconds to descend to 10' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 20' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 30' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 40' and hang there for 30 sec. and then reverse it. all in all a supposedly a 9 min dive. My buddy and I start our descent and hit 10' in about 3 seconds...we hang there (+ or - 5') for the 30 sec and continue to 20'...again that takes about 5 seconds, this time we bounce all over the place...not sure what was going on...part of the problem was we both had just thrown weigh in our dry suit pockets to compensate for our screw-up on the previous dive...who knows. Anyway, we do our 30 seconds there and go to 30 (in about 5 seconds) do our 30 seconds there and take another 5 seconds to 40'...at this point Duane asks for my buddys mask (funny story behind that one too). I am now the dive leader and realize that I have no freakin idea how much longer we need to stay at this depth nor do I have any idea how to tell my buddy to dump air as he is ascending way to rapidly for the drill. I grab his hand use it to give him the level off signal...at this point we are both dumping air like crazy and it has become pointless to think we are going to complete the drill correctly. We cork and again give each other a heart felt youre number one. Did I mention that we surfaced about 50 yards from where we were supposed to surface with a total bottom time of about 17 minutes? Watching the next buddy team made us feel a bit better again, but not much...We get more positive reinforcement from Duane...."nobody died"
At this point, I don't think anyone even wants to do dive three. We are all demoralized and our confidence is shot. But...we came to be humiliated, so let the record play.
Dive Three
Well, dive three sounds easy...follow Duane around the nav course while he lays line, then pair up and follow the line while he throws scenarios at us. Piece of cake...I'm resigned to the fact that I will be swimming a 400' course sans my mask. I figured since he messed with my buddy on the previous dive, I'm in for it on this one. My buddy and I are the second pair to run the gauntlet. We get about 20' in and Duane grabs me and tells me I am outta air. NO FREAKIN WAY we are gonna get off that easy. Well, my buddy has a minor snag getting his 7' hose from around his Frankenstein (you should see it...) noggin, so I really am outta air by the time it gets to me. No biggie, we loose a touch of ground in the water column but not enough to talk about. We take off swimming again. My buddy has my elbow and we're snug as bugs in a rug. We get another 50' or so and I get a huge tug on my arm. I turn around to see that my buddys mask has been ganked. Nice...we hang for a sec and gather wits, give OKs and I take lead. We swim another 100' or so and I notice the guideline start to "move"...I turn around and see it wrapped around my buddys fin getting hefty jerks from Duane, who appears to be trying to remove the fin. SWEET, I think to myself, we must be doing well enough that he feels comfortable throwing another problem in the mix (says the guy who still has his mask on). I untangle my maskless buddy, who looses buoyancy, I ascend and pull him back to depth. We finish the course with no additional problems. Duane gives us the - you, you and me are a team - to wrap up the line and we are off. Once more my buddy gets a foot tangled by Duane, I remove it. A third time Duane tangles him up, I remove it, only to find that Duane has wrapped the line around my manifold. My buddy untangles this and "we" continue. I get my trim back and look at Duane who is giving me the "where's your buddy"...I point to my right, no buddy, I do a 360, no buddy, I look up, my buddy is on the surface. Great, I lost my buddy. We end the day with that.
All in all this was a GREAT class. We are now aware of PROPER techniques for drills. Not that we can perfectly execute them, but we can practice them PROPERLY and know what they should look like. We also know that we are not performing at a level acceptable for technical diving. BUT we are aware of where we need to be to safely be at that level.
D
Duane's Intro to Tech class is very demanding. Let me restate this....Duane's (reffered to as DJ from here on out) Intro to Tech class is VERY DEMANDING. This is not your run of the mill everything is lookin' good, and here's your C-card - enjoy diving type class. Granted, everyone who takes the class gets the card (correct me if I'm wrong DJ), but the card is worthless. It is more of a memento than anything else. The knowledge you gain from this course is invaluable. DJ videotapes your class and sends you a copy, which is a huge learning too. DJ also gives you an honest evaluation of your skills, and I'm talking basic skills (read the class log below). Skills that you learn in OW as well as some new techniques. The class deals with the 3 Cs (Control, Competence, and Comfort) and the 3 Es (Education, Equipment, and Experience), perfecting skills, buddy awareness, dive planning etc. This particular class had a group of three from the Indianapolis area who dive together frequently, one is an AI, one a DM and me, a DM candidate as well as another guy. None of us are new to diving, but we all were shown how poorly we were executing skills and left the class with new knowledge and skills to put into practice for the next few months.
So, here is the rundown of MY class
Day One:
Dive One
Started with about 3 hours of class work, all a piece of cake: basic skills (buoyancy, trim, balance, kicking, and breathing), the 3 "C's", (Competence, Control, Comfort) the 3 "E's" (Education, Equipment, Experience), and gear configurations. We get into the water to do the 5 basic skills and practice our kicks. Sounds like a piece of cake. BUT, all skills are to be done in a horizontal position while maintaining + or - 3' (+ or minus 5 for recreational divers) in the water column. OK, sounds a bit harder. Come to find out, my version of the "frog" is garbage, my modified frog is only slightly better. My bicycle kick makes me feel like a complete idiot and my backwards kick, even though I actually go backwards, is once again crap. About the only one I get even an "it was OK" on is my modified flutter kick, which is what I use most after a proper flutter. OK, that is outta the way, now on to the 5 basics. No real problems here except we all were probably + or - 5' in the water column and most of the time at a 45° angle. End dive one with the comment from DJ that ...."I like to start off with the positive...you weren't the worst class I've ever had". At least we've got that going for us.
Dive Two
We go down to do our valve drills...oh boy! As with the first dive, we are working on a platform at ~20'. Viz is about 20-25' and water is roughly 70°F. I am wearing just my Under Armor and a dry suit for both dives 1 & 2. I have on a new SS back plate with brand spanking new webbing, this seriously puts a damper on my mobility, but hey, I can still reach those valves. So I am second to do the drill. I mess up trying to clip off my primary and blow trim/buoyancy and bounce off the platform. I regain control and spit out my back up, recover my primary...only to realize I still have the primary clipped off. I manage to get the primary in my mouth, but again blow buoyancy, trim, and hit the deck... Duane gives me his primary and fixes the problem and I start the drill over. I have problems reaching the left post and blow buoyancy/trim a third (or fourth, or fith) time <sigh> and limp my way through the remainder of the drill. The rest of the team completes the drill, making me feel only slightly better about my performance and we go on a tour of the quarry. Let me tell you, Duane can frog kick like nobodies business. It was helpful to watch how the frog should be done for 20 minutes or so. We surface and again get "you weren't the worst class I've ever had" as our "positive reinforcement.
We break and head back to shore to talk about the next days events.
Day Two
We review Decompression Theory, buddy awareness, a good dive plan, SAC's, RMV's, tank factors, ect...no problem for divers with our certifications. However, we have to get in the water
Dive One
We are going to ~50' to shoot some bags and practice ascents. My buddy is wearing a new set of 5th Element unders...very nice, but never seen water. I am putting on my old (and eye watering...they need a bath) Pinnacle 200g Thinsulates. I make Duane aware that I am in the new SS BP and do not know how I will be weighted with the 200grams on. He is cool with that since we will be doing weighting after we finish this dive. We are really focusing on pre-dive checks now. We do our check (sans weight check) and swim out to the buoy. We cover the dive plan and give the go. Everyone descends but my buddy and I. To my relief, he is also unable to descend, as well...at least I'm not alone. We give each other the obligatory eye roll and middle finger and continue to fight to get down. We end up making our way back to the buoy line and my buddy gets down using the line. I keep trying, but by this time, I am pretty winded. I have my venturi tuned all the way down and am sucking for air and am completely pissed. I decide to take a breather at the surface and gather my composure before giving it another go. I can barley make out my buddys tanks underwater and decide that I am gonna wait for him to ascend to meet up with me again and tell him I need to get more weight. There is no way I'm gonna be able to hang around while we all shoot bags (5 total) and then try free ascents with no mask not controlled anyway. He never comes up, so I decide, screw it...I'm gonna cork from 50' and like it. I fight my way down to 41'....no air in my bladder or my dry suit...OUCH...but I'm finally neutral. Duane gives me the universal "***"...and I try to hand signal that I am light; its not working so I have to use my slate. He gives me the nod and the bag. I bounce off the bottom while I shoot the bag and pass it to my buddy, he does the same (he's in the same boat...no air in either space and riding a thin line between neutral buoyancy and an elevator ride to the surface) and we get the buddy up and thumb the dive from Duane. We work our way back to the line and start our ascent. We are both fighting the whole way up to keep a controlled ascent. We have a safety stop at 20' and surface completely exhausted and extremely pissed. We let eah other know how bad tehy suck and make the long surface swim back to the dock and get our weighting right. Duane does not say a word about our folly. His silence was worse than hearing you werent the worse class Ive had we knew we screwed up.
Dive Two
This dive is our controlled descent/ascent dive...30 seconds to descend to 10' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 20' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 30' and hang there for 30 sec. 30 seconds to descend to 40' and hang there for 30 sec. and then reverse it. all in all a supposedly a 9 min dive. My buddy and I start our descent and hit 10' in about 3 seconds...we hang there (+ or - 5') for the 30 sec and continue to 20'...again that takes about 5 seconds, this time we bounce all over the place...not sure what was going on...part of the problem was we both had just thrown weigh in our dry suit pockets to compensate for our screw-up on the previous dive...who knows. Anyway, we do our 30 seconds there and go to 30 (in about 5 seconds) do our 30 seconds there and take another 5 seconds to 40'...at this point Duane asks for my buddys mask (funny story behind that one too). I am now the dive leader and realize that I have no freakin idea how much longer we need to stay at this depth nor do I have any idea how to tell my buddy to dump air as he is ascending way to rapidly for the drill. I grab his hand use it to give him the level off signal...at this point we are both dumping air like crazy and it has become pointless to think we are going to complete the drill correctly. We cork and again give each other a heart felt youre number one. Did I mention that we surfaced about 50 yards from where we were supposed to surface with a total bottom time of about 17 minutes? Watching the next buddy team made us feel a bit better again, but not much...We get more positive reinforcement from Duane...."nobody died"
At this point, I don't think anyone even wants to do dive three. We are all demoralized and our confidence is shot. But...we came to be humiliated, so let the record play.
Dive Three
Well, dive three sounds easy...follow Duane around the nav course while he lays line, then pair up and follow the line while he throws scenarios at us. Piece of cake...I'm resigned to the fact that I will be swimming a 400' course sans my mask. I figured since he messed with my buddy on the previous dive, I'm in for it on this one. My buddy and I are the second pair to run the gauntlet. We get about 20' in and Duane grabs me and tells me I am outta air. NO FREAKIN WAY we are gonna get off that easy. Well, my buddy has a minor snag getting his 7' hose from around his Frankenstein (you should see it...) noggin, so I really am outta air by the time it gets to me. No biggie, we loose a touch of ground in the water column but not enough to talk about. We take off swimming again. My buddy has my elbow and we're snug as bugs in a rug. We get another 50' or so and I get a huge tug on my arm. I turn around to see that my buddys mask has been ganked. Nice...we hang for a sec and gather wits, give OKs and I take lead. We swim another 100' or so and I notice the guideline start to "move"...I turn around and see it wrapped around my buddys fin getting hefty jerks from Duane, who appears to be trying to remove the fin. SWEET, I think to myself, we must be doing well enough that he feels comfortable throwing another problem in the mix (says the guy who still has his mask on). I untangle my maskless buddy, who looses buoyancy, I ascend and pull him back to depth. We finish the course with no additional problems. Duane gives us the - you, you and me are a team - to wrap up the line and we are off. Once more my buddy gets a foot tangled by Duane, I remove it. A third time Duane tangles him up, I remove it, only to find that Duane has wrapped the line around my manifold. My buddy untangles this and "we" continue. I get my trim back and look at Duane who is giving me the "where's your buddy"...I point to my right, no buddy, I do a 360, no buddy, I look up, my buddy is on the surface. Great, I lost my buddy. We end the day with that.
All in all this was a GREAT class. We are now aware of PROPER techniques for drills. Not that we can perfectly execute them, but we can practice them PROPERLY and know what they should look like. We also know that we are not performing at a level acceptable for technical diving. BUT we are aware of where we need to be to safely be at that level.
D
Good luck with continued training with Duane
I think he did learn a thing or two about how to incorporate rabbit ears into the skills; mask remove/replace has an extra step when ears are involved 
