The most ridiculously overstaffed Fundies class ever taught . . .

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TSandM

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. . . began yesterday.

Some folks will remember that there was a long discussion about Fundies from last year (the thread has been revived and is currently running). It ended with Guy Shockey offering a free Fundamentals class to DaleC and a fellow Canadian, so long as I took part in it. It took a while to get the class scheduled, and by the time it began, we had six students in it.

Teaching the six students today were THREE full-fledged GUE instructors (one an instructor trainer, and two who are interning their T1 instructor ratings), 2 teaching GUE instructor interns, and two additional GUE instructor interns. I believe this may well be the only GUE class ever taught where the instructors outnumber the students.

Yesterday was academics, and man, has that changed. My Fundies from 10 years ago had no instructional materials except a Xeroxed copy of the PowerPoint. And the PowerPoint wasn't all that. This time, we had reading material -- Jarrod's book (which everybody agrees needs a serious makeover, if only to edit the writing), a Nitrox manual with homework problems, homework problems on min deco and lots of gas problems. The PowerPoint is far more extensive and MUCH more professionally produced. The class has definitely matured.

It is great fun watching five different people teach. Each has his own, very distinct style, and they are all different. Liz, who is 5'2" and looks like she's 21, can bring a room full of grown-ups to their knees without raising her voice. Alex, who is about 6'4" and has a beard that a Taliban fighter would be proud of, fills a room with his deep, booming voice, and is impressively efficient. Jo, with his dreadlocks and beard, has the gentlest approach, and can correct something you're doing wrong and leave you feeling entirely helped and not at all criticized. Koos has his lovely South African accent, which left one of my classmates puzzled as to why he had been asked about how our decompression strategy dealt with bee stings ("these things"). And Guy is impressing the dickens out of me as a teacher, because he grounds everybody, and seems to have an almost perfect sense of when we need a little propping up to keep going.

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Today, we began with going through all the gear. It had never occurred to me that using my Hog regs with the diaphragm pointing up rendered them vulnerable to damage, and after trying to deal with installing the reg the other way around, I may decide to go ahead and live with the risk. I almost ran out of my supply of profanity in the process. A few other things were a bit long, or not tied in precisely the right place, and the rig will be better for the tune-up.

At this point, I had a personal first in diving. We got into both undergarments and dry suit at the shop, and I actually drove the truck while wearing my dry suit, which is something I have never done before, and I think I know why. It's not particularly comfortable . . . At any rate, the training site is nice, except for the fact that the parking lot is so severely sloped that none of the tanks will stand up on the tailgate. I got my butt chewed for setting my X-table up near the stairs, where it was level, because I was too far from my teammates. Too bad they don't have X-tables, too, or we could have a nice grouping where the gear is cooperative.

Propulsion techniques are now practiced first in the water without any equipment other than exposure protection. One MUST assume proper trim, with the head and shoulders arched back, because otherwise breathing becomes quite difficult. Those of us wearing the equivalent of a down sleeping bag under our dry suits have bit of a problem keeping our feet in the water, and it's awfully hard to do a frog kick in the air that moves you anywhere. It was an interesting challenge, as was repeatedly trying to go from a horizontal float to a standing position with buoyant legs and no fins. THAT's a skill I clearly need to practice.

The first dive is a descent to a line, kick demonstrations from the instructor, and then kicks demonstrated by the students. I will say that having three instructors in addition to my two buddies made life a bit confusing from a visual standpoint. Luckily the instructors were all in doubles, and my buddies were single-tanking with me, but the time it took me to ascertain that each time I looked around made things a bit inefficient.

By the time we finished those exercises, I was shivering uncontrollably, and the debrief in the water was hard, but Guy realized how cold I was, and we got out and decided to head back to the shop for the last lecture segment, and wonderful chocolate chip cookies baked by Dale's wife. We then repaired to the Shipyard Pub, where I had quite possibly the best burger I have ever eaten anywhere, and the live music was playing all the songs from the 70's that make me want to get up and dance or sing along, neither of which is anything I should be doing in public. It was really great fun to look around and see the whole group of us, the smiles and the laughter AND the earnest conversations. I love this world I live and dive in!

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Great report as always Lynne. Looking forward to reading more of them
Gue training is the best in the business.
 
Don't those antlers prevent donating gas? :p
 
Great report...looking forward to the next installment.

Do you have a pic of your X Table?
 
Oldbear, Husky X-Workhorse Workbench-17185155 - The Home Depot.

BTW, the photographs (and probably any others I post here) are courtesy Joakim Hjelm, one of the GUE instructors working with us this weekend.

I like that table...I can see the value of it in a parking lot. I had the bright idea to buy at Home Depot a large work storage box on wheels. This way I could haul all my gear from the parking lot to the shore of a couple of Colorado's dive sites. And use it to help put on my gear. Like any storage box, however, I filled the thing up and it was too heavy to lift into the truck.
 
It's a shame you're stuck with one first stage for this, but for those not restricted with the extra hose, this should follow GUE's rules for single tank routing, but try mounting the first stage with the diaphragm pointing flat away from the valve knob. Long hose is on the back side of turret, inflator hose on the front, SPG down obviously, and a super short hose coming from the bottom port on the turret.

Looks basically like the left post of the doubles configuration with the long hose added on there, but with a drysuit requiring the extra inflator hose it almost makes it worth to go with an inflation bottle since that hose routing is actually very nice to work with. I really enjoy the fact that I only have to swap the long hose over when I go from doubles to singles *I just orally inflate when I'm doing single tank diving anyway, so don't usually plug the drysuit hose in.

Table is spiffy btw! With my twinsets I set everything up at the house before I head out, but if you're diving singles and worried about rolling about that's pretty slick. Would actually be good for rigging sidemount bottles in cave country as well, guess that counts as DIR-ish now with UTD having the course and GUE coming in with it shortly.
 
Tbone,

Are you orally inflating your wing or dry suit?
 
wing if I'm using one, but not using one is decidedly not DIR..... I was trained in a Halcyon Eclipse and we didn't use power inflators during class, so I'm quite comfortable not using one and with a single tank especially in warm water it's easy enough to not bother. In cold water I'm a huge fan of my little button o' wonder.... I use double LP72's instead of single tanks for any non travel recreational diving so don't have this particular problem, but was just throwing it out there that if you don't have the need for both inflators on the same first stage, laying the first stage flat not only allows you a quick way to utilize the turret style first stage from your left post for single tanks, but even for dedicated single tank diving it is a great way to route hoses.
 
I thought so. But I was just getting into dry suits when I took a job in the Marshall Islands. My DUI suit does not have an oral inflator but I was not 100% sure if others did or did not. I have been reading a lot about sidemount lately and one guy expounds on orally inflating the small wing...which I can see. While back home in Denver I saw a Razor sidemount harness and it had both a LP inflator and an oral inflator. So this put the idea of an oral inflator on a DS in my head...silly me.

enough of this...this is Lynne's Fundy thread
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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