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- I'm a Fish!
Crazy whirlwind of a week, but here goes.
I've been lucky enough to have a Meg 2.7 on permaloan to me. Running through the list of instructors, talking to them, and talking to some very respected cave CCR divers all seemed to lead me towards taking this course with Ted. He's a Long Island guy, so while we have to agree to disagree on the color of our clam chowder and baseball teams, we have a somewhat similar outlook on tech/cave diving in general and hit it off which I think was a relief for both of us. Took a full Mod1 course on this thing since it has been years since I've been on any CCR and never had any formal training on them and felt that if any bad habits had developed, we would at least have the 2 extra days to iron them out.
Meg came to me needing a couple repairs and while I took care of most of them myself, my molex connectors were delayed so we took day 1 to head to his house, get that fixed and kind of scope each other out on how the week was going to go. Swung out to IANTD HQ where we went over some Meg specific stuff due to the backwards loop flow with O2 on the inhale side and created the framework for a checklist. Ted believes that the ISC checklist is far too involved and most people will stop using it after class because it is too clunky. At 42 items I can't disagree with him, so we went through and throughout the class mine evolved a bit but is 8 main points, with 10 total sub-bullets. A couple showed up the hard way *mouthpiece integrity, and running my canister light cable before putting the loop on*.
Day 2 was off to spend an ungodly amount of time in the basin at Orange Grove which thankfully was clear water without too much duckweed. What was interesting and painful to note here was that on CCR's I've previously dove/built you do have a bit of buoyancy help when you hold a full exhalation or inhalation. Nothing like on OC obviously, but it will at least help you start/arrest an ascent or descent. Fun fact, running min-loop on OTS lungs with the Meg means it does absolutely nothing for you which was painful for about 2 hours while I was trying to get sorted out. Started out without offboard dil plugged in and the plan was to add O2 only until 20ft, then open the ADV to allow dil to come in for a bit of ease on descent. I don't know if the plunger was off on the wrong angle, or this was tuned a bit too stiff, but after about 30 minutes of having to open the shut-off, press on the ADV, then close the shut-off, I gave the one finger salute to my ADV, plugged in off-board, and didn't touch it outside of gear checks for the rest of class.
Day 3 I got a break since I had to present at a conference in Orlando, then for Days 4-5 it was more of the same for the next few days with comfort levels getting much better, but the "failures" getting worse and worse, and naturally showing up in the least convenient orders all while piling on top of each other. Lots of frustration, but lots of satisfaction getting everything sorted out.
Class was very much a worthwhile investment for me because Ted is truly a thinking instructor and tailors the course to exactly what you need as a diver. That only comes from his extensive experience as a diver and an instructor, particularly on the really big cave expeditions. He's been at CCR's since the 90's and had some great stories about the first HUD and how it saved Will Smithers on the first dive with it, some scary stories about the Cis-Lunar scrubbers, being the first instructor to do his Cave CCR Instructor course in a sidemount rebreather, etc. Ted definitely is the kind of instructor that I would go out of my way to take a CCR course from even if you are not planning on purchasing or diving one of the units he teaches on. I have a general issue with most technical training because of how the industry is moving, but he has kept that BS out of the course and is really training you from the "old-school" which was a breath of fresh air for me.
I've been lucky enough to have a Meg 2.7 on permaloan to me. Running through the list of instructors, talking to them, and talking to some very respected cave CCR divers all seemed to lead me towards taking this course with Ted. He's a Long Island guy, so while we have to agree to disagree on the color of our clam chowder and baseball teams, we have a somewhat similar outlook on tech/cave diving in general and hit it off which I think was a relief for both of us. Took a full Mod1 course on this thing since it has been years since I've been on any CCR and never had any formal training on them and felt that if any bad habits had developed, we would at least have the 2 extra days to iron them out.
Meg came to me needing a couple repairs and while I took care of most of them myself, my molex connectors were delayed so we took day 1 to head to his house, get that fixed and kind of scope each other out on how the week was going to go. Swung out to IANTD HQ where we went over some Meg specific stuff due to the backwards loop flow with O2 on the inhale side and created the framework for a checklist. Ted believes that the ISC checklist is far too involved and most people will stop using it after class because it is too clunky. At 42 items I can't disagree with him, so we went through and throughout the class mine evolved a bit but is 8 main points, with 10 total sub-bullets. A couple showed up the hard way *mouthpiece integrity, and running my canister light cable before putting the loop on*.
Day 2 was off to spend an ungodly amount of time in the basin at Orange Grove which thankfully was clear water without too much duckweed. What was interesting and painful to note here was that on CCR's I've previously dove/built you do have a bit of buoyancy help when you hold a full exhalation or inhalation. Nothing like on OC obviously, but it will at least help you start/arrest an ascent or descent. Fun fact, running min-loop on OTS lungs with the Meg means it does absolutely nothing for you which was painful for about 2 hours while I was trying to get sorted out. Started out without offboard dil plugged in and the plan was to add O2 only until 20ft, then open the ADV to allow dil to come in for a bit of ease on descent. I don't know if the plunger was off on the wrong angle, or this was tuned a bit too stiff, but after about 30 minutes of having to open the shut-off, press on the ADV, then close the shut-off, I gave the one finger salute to my ADV, plugged in off-board, and didn't touch it outside of gear checks for the rest of class.
Day 3 I got a break since I had to present at a conference in Orlando, then for Days 4-5 it was more of the same for the next few days with comfort levels getting much better, but the "failures" getting worse and worse, and naturally showing up in the least convenient orders all while piling on top of each other. Lots of frustration, but lots of satisfaction getting everything sorted out.
Class was very much a worthwhile investment for me because Ted is truly a thinking instructor and tailors the course to exactly what you need as a diver. That only comes from his extensive experience as a diver and an instructor, particularly on the really big cave expeditions. He's been at CCR's since the 90's and had some great stories about the first HUD and how it saved Will Smithers on the first dive with it, some scary stories about the Cis-Lunar scrubbers, being the first instructor to do his Cave CCR Instructor course in a sidemount rebreather, etc. Ted definitely is the kind of instructor that I would go out of my way to take a CCR course from even if you are not planning on purchasing or diving one of the units he teaches on. I have a general issue with most technical training because of how the industry is moving, but he has kept that BS out of the course and is really training you from the "old-school" which was a breath of fresh air for me.
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