PADI AOW Certification

[jringold]

Hi – I am interested in getting PADI AOW certified. I’ve looked through the PADI site but I’m not totally sure I totally “get it”. As I understand it (please correct me if I am wrong) - The below is posed as questions – not fact…


In order to be AOW certified I would need to complete Deep Adventure Dive and Underwater Navigation Certifications. These have to be done before I start the AOW course.
In addition to these I would need to complete three other certifications – my selections would be:
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Boat Diver
Digital Underwater Photography
I would also need to complete these three prior to starting the AOW course.


Once I do all of the above, then I start the AOW course.


Is there a time limit? For example, let’s say I did PPB this August (which I am already scheduled to do) and Boat Diver in Sept. Next summer I do Photography and Navigation. Finally, next October I do Deep Adv. Then start AOW spring of 2017. Does that work or is there a time limit from the time I start the program to complete it? Also I want to take the Nitrox course but as I understand it, this is not considered an "elective" for AOW since there is no actual check out dive.


Is any of this accurate or am I totally smoking dope?

 

[icechip]

A couple of years ago the PADI AOW course I took included instruction and check-out dives for navigation, deep, night, boat and computer.

 

[boulderjohn]

You are mistaken about a lot of it. I will try to explain the steps below.

1. You don't need anything prior to the course other than being OW certified.

2. In the course you will complete 5 "adventure dives" on different focus areas, including the academic material associated with the dives.

3. One of those dives focuses on navigation.

4. One of thsoe dives deals with diving deeper than the OW recommended maximum depth.

5. The other three are your choice. Different instructors will recommend different choices for you, sometimes depending upon the location. For example, if you wanted to do the dive with my shop in Colorado, Fish Identification and Drift diving would be really, really lousy choices. If you wanted to do it in the summer in northern Norway, night diving would be a bad choice.

Just decide where you want to do it and ask them for advice.

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 12:56 PM ----------

I forgot to address the timeline issue. We are talkig about 5 dives, not 5 courses. They can be done in a grand total of two days.

 

[kevindsingleton]

If you wanted to do it in the summer in northern Norway, night diving would be a bad choice.

Why is that?

 

[Hawkwood]

Think of the sun in northern latitudes. You'd be diving sometime in the wee hours of the morning, if it got dark enough.

We rarely do night dives for classes here. Right now it does not get dark enough until about 10pm. I've been involved in one class were we were not home until about 3am.

Thats the reason Night has not been a required dive for AOW in a very long time.

 

[Storker]

If you wanted to do it in the summer in northern Norway, night diving would be a bad choice.

Which is why you shouldn't take your AOW cert around midsummer in Norway.

If you have the choice, I'd strongly recommend PPB, deep, nav and night as four of your five "adventure" dives for your AOW. PPB is a great addition to your basic skills, deep is an extremely good idea if you're going to dive deeper than 18m/60ft, nav skills are more or less required if you ever are going to dive without a guide (which is the way we do it on this side of the pond) and night diving is just too cool to not having experienced.




---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 10:01 PM ----------

Think of the sun in northern latitudes. You'd be diving sometime in the wee hours of the morning, if it got dark enough.

It won't get dark enough in several months. My night diving season starts sometime in October and ends early April.


--
Sent from my Android phone
Typos are a feature, not a bug

 

[stuartv]

Have you really thought about why you want the AOW certification?

I got OW certified last year. Then I looked at AOW and decided that, for me, it looks like a waste of money.

Rather than spend money to get 1 deep dive, 1 u/w nav dive, 1 boat dive, 1 night dive, etc.., with no actual certifications resulting, plus pretty incomplete education on each subject, I decided I would be better off to just take the full specialty courses for all the things I want or need to know, based on the dives I want to do.

Getting an AOW card does not get you a single full specialty certification. It only gets you a card that means you've done at least 9 total dives in your whole career, with at least one being deeper than 60' and one exposing you to the basics of underwater navigation. In other words, I don't think it really means much in the grand scheme of things. Better to go straight to getting more complete education on the subjects that are truly relevant to the dives you want to do.

I have now completed the full courses for Buoyancy Control, Wreck, Deep, Drysuit, and the TDI Nitrox course. I feel much better prepared to do the dives I want to do than I would have felt with just OW training and 5 adventure dives under my belt.

I just got back from a weekend of diving wrecks of the coast of North Carolina. I went out on boats from two different dive centers (Olympus and Discovery). Both shops' websites say that their full day charters require Advanced certification (which is pretty vague, if you ask me, given how much difference there is between how different agencies use that word). I showed up and did 3 full day charters and was never asked for any other credentials than my basic OW card and my Nitrox card. And I'm pretty sure that, if anyone had actually asked about it, having the full Deep cert alone would have been enough to satisfy them and allow me on the boat.

For that matter, I did a night dive off Waikiki back in March. I had no formal Deep or Wreck training at that point and have never had any night dive training. The charter there took me and my buddy out and we dove the Sea Tiger (a sunken ship) at night. My personal max depth on that was 105'. Again, nobody ever asked for anything but my regular OW card and my Nitrox card (and actually, they might not have even looked at my Nitrox card - I can't remember).

My take is that the PADI AOW (and SDI Advanced Adventure Diver) certification is a bunch of marketing baloney to make the agencies and the dive shops more money. If your goal is to learn and be prepared to do more advanced dives, I think you'll save yourself some money and some time by going straight to the relevant specialty courses.

OTOH, I reckon there are plenty of people that want the AOW card for bragging rights or as a sort of Merit Badge. In which case, more power to you! Nothing wrong with that.

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 04:16 PM ----------

deep is an extremely good idea if you're going to dive deeper than 30m/100ft

I'm not a PADI guy so correct me if I'm wrong. But, doesn't PADI OW get you a recommended max depth of 60ft. And the one Deep dive you would do during AOW gets you to a recommended max of 100ft? And you would need to take the full Deep specialty to increase your recommended max depth to 130ft?

 

[jringold]

Thanks John - Looks like I was totally off base. Let me throw this out. I am already signed up for the PPB class in August. This is a class in and of itself. I have the training material and have scheduled my checkout dives (two) during a trip in a few weeks.


So are you saying that I would take each cert class -or– that the AOW gives a subset of these classes – not a separate cert class for each one?


Sorry to be so hard headed. I don’t mind registering for each of the 5 cert classes but in the long run it might be cheaper if the AOW course is just a subset (abbreviated version) of each of the 5.


Take care,

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 04:25 PM ----------



---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 04:26 PM ----------

Stuart – That makes a lot of sense. My ultimate goal is simply to be a better diver. For instance, right now I know that I need work on buoyancy. My ultimate goal is underwater photography but to get there, my buoyancy has to be top notch. Saying that I am AOW doesn’t mean a lot to me – that and a dollar will get my a cup of coffee. Being the best diver that I can be is what I want. So from what I am reading here, it appears that I need to just scrap the AOW idea and proceed with the cert courses that I think will make me the diver I want to be.

 

[boulderjohn]

Thanks John - Looks like I was totally off base. Let me throw this out. I am already signed up for the PPB class in August. This is a class in and of itself. I have the training material and have scheduled my checkout dives (two) during a trip in a few weeks.


So are you saying that I would take each cert class -or– that the AOW gives a subset of these classes – not a separate cert class for each one?

AOW was invented in the mid 1960s (and not by PADI) with the goal of giving divers more experience in specific skills (navigation and deeper diving) and some experience in different interest areas that they might want to try. The original purpose, openly stated, was to try to keep divers interested in diving because there was perceived to be a high dropout rate after certification. The name turned out to be a mistake, but in truth it was then the most advanced course available other than instructor. It really was intended to be an introduction to more advanced diving.

No, you do not take a separate class for each of the five dives--you take one class that has five dives.

Now, there is nothing stopping you from going on to take full specialty courses after that. If one particular area sparks an interest, go for it. If not, don't go for it. You will not have lost anything by doing the AOW first because the AOW dives count toward the specialty. For example, the Deep Diver Specialty requires four dives, but the first one is identical to the AOW dive, and if you already have AOW, the deep dive you did there counts, so you only need three.

The AOW card by itself has value. In many places, it is required by dive operators for certain more advanced dives. In addition, it is required for some more advanced training, inlcuding technical diving (depending upon the agency). I cannot accept you into my tech program without it.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Now you're getting it. If you have a specific goal in mind work towards that. The AOW card is sometimes needed with operations that see the need to limit their liability. In the keys for example most of the reputable ops won't take you to the Duane, Speigel, Thunderbolt, or other deep wrecks without it or it's equivalent. Certain number of logged dives in excess of 100 ft, deep specialty, etc. The problem is that because they think it helps limit their liability you may not get a ride to those sites without it. It just makes it easier.

The other thing to consider is that there are agencies, really instructors, other than PADI and SDI ( I am an SDI Instructor by the way) that offer AOW or it's equivalent that are not just samples of these dives. We actually do pass on real new knowledge and skills. My Advanced Level class (AOW card) is a bit different and it's not guaranteed you'll pass. Or even be allowed to start the course. I can send you the outline to use as a comparison if you PM me your email.

One other tip I will pass on is that if you do plan to do serious underwater photography, find a serious professional underwater photographer who actually makes some money doing it to teach you. Don't worry about them being a scuba instructor. By the time you actually get to where you want to do some serious learning and shooting you'll know how to dive. Did you know that for some agencies you can become an underwater photo instructor by attending a one day workshop on it? Much of which is spent learning how to sell the class. I had that opportunity and passed.

I have over 700 dives now and am a technical diving instructor. My dive skills are pretty good. I just bought a digital slr. I'll spend the rest of the season learning to use it on land. Then I'll put it in a housing next season unless I get a good deal on one earlier. Then I am going to take an underwater photo class from a diver who is not a scuba instructor. But he does it for a living. Pretty sure I'll get a great class and not have to pay extra to an agency for a piece of plastic that means nothing. Nothing because someone else may have that same card from the guy who took the one day workshop to become an instructor.