You are greatly over-simplifying my request.
1. They never covered what to do should you have a runaway BCD inflator button.
2. If you free flow, they taught you how to sip air from it. That's it. They did NOT mention to do things like try dialing down the resistance, try to swish it around in the water, look at the purge button to check that it's not stuck, etc.
I'm specifically asking for other scenarios that are not covered in the class.
You're new, and diving will take pretty much all your attention just to be able to handle the stuff you were already taught. There are all sorts of skills that are possible to perform but are unnecessary at this point in your diving career. "Sipping air" is one of them. Screwing with your regulator adjustments underwater is another.
Yes, if you have an adjustment screw on your reg, you can try playing with it. However it's unlikely to stop anything significant and I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time doing so.
Air is air. A free-flow is visually confusing but not dangerous and doesn't require any special actions on your part except getting your buddy's attention and surfacing normally with him.
It will not "force air down your throat" because the exhaust valve is balanced precisely at ambient pressure. It does not require "sipping", removal from your mouth or any other special procedures except the awareness that it will shortly be over and you'll probably be OOA.
If you remember and practice the skills and procedures that should have been covered in OW class, you'll be very safe.
There are really only a couple of types of "problems" that you're likely to have, and luckily there are only a couple of responses you need to remember.
1) In case of a runaway BC inflater, you can pop the quick disconnect off.
2) In all other cases of air delivery problems (no air, hard to breathe, too much air, whatever), the solution is the same: Get your buddy's attention, end the dive and surface, sharing air if necessary.
The same goes for any other physical, mental or unknown issues like anxiety, vertigo, any sort of unexpected sensations or responses or altered mental state: Get your buddy's attention, end the dive and surface, sharing air if necessary.
Once you're on the surface, do as you were trained: Stay with your buddy, establish positive buoyancy by inflating your BC with the inflater if it works, manually if it doesn't or by ditching weights if necessary.
You are (or should be) be doing dives that are well within the no-decompression limit and are not in any sort of overhead environment, and are at depths where surfacing with your buddy at any time is a safe activity.
While learning is great, at least for now, you'll be miles ahead of the game if you just practice the skills and procedures you've already been taught until you really have them nailed. They seem simple, but are actually easily applied to nearly any situation you're likely to encounter and work quite well.
flots.
