Serious Question about OOA training

[mrobinson]

I do like for the OOA diver to tutake the reg out of his/her mouth that way they really are OOA! It delevops confidence and hurrys the donor a bit.

I know that PADI says this is a liability issue (and if you do have the reflex to breathe you don't get anything,) BUT ITA it delevops confidence - something I'm working on and didn't realize it was an issue until recently. I wish I would have practiced this more.... before it came to be a bad habit.

EDIT - PADI standards require you turn off the air like everyone has said... strange your instructor didn't. Which agency did you do it with? Never mind it doesn't really matter - you and your buddy go for a dive, or go back into a pool for awhile, practice all your skills and give turning off your air a go... do it again and again. Make a game of war - rip off each others masks, rip the regs out, turn off the air if you can... just play safe!

 

[gangrel441]

...Instead, I spend ENORMOUS amounts of TIME & EFFORT convincing them, directing them, demanding of them, warning them to ALWAYS plan for the AMOUNT OF AIR THEY'LL NEED & to MONITOR THEIR AIR SUPPLY frequently while diving so that they..

...NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER RUN OUT OF FREAKIN' AIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm...I just had a conversation with my brother-in-law about one of his nephews who just got his OW cert and went on a family trip. One of his first non-training dives, and he had a catastrophic primary reg hose failure. He calmly tapped on the DM's arm, alerted him to the situation, and (not sure which since my B-I-L is a non-diver and was not present) either took the DM's octo and made the ascent or did a C.E.S.A. In either case, I would say that the circumstances of his OOA situation were beyond his control, and his training did keep him alive that day.

I told my B-I-L to pass along the message to the nephew that based on that story alone, he could dive with me any day!

 

[Mark Vlahos]

In SCUBA, we practice out of air drills...but we never do it with a tank that is actually empty...at least in the training I have had thus far. Is there any school of thought that would have a student diver really breath out the air and then use a buddy's air to get to the surface.

Jeff

In normal recreational diving I do not turn off my air, nor would I like it if someone else turned off my air. I do make sure that I can reach the valve on my tank, just in case.

When I dive in doubles, whether it is for a recreational dive, a cave dive, or a deep dive, at the beginning of the dive I make sure I can reach the valves. At the end of the dive at a shallow depth like a safety stop or my last deco stop on my backgas I do a valve drill.

A valve drill with doubles has you turn off your gas while you are breathing from that regulator. One needs to understand that with many doubles used today in technical diving an isolation manifold is used, so you are using two separate first stages and each first stage has its own second stage. When you turn off one post the other is still working. In the valve drill I actually breathe the regulator empty and then switch to my backup. Once I am safely on my backup I turn the first post back on and then do the drill with my other post, breathing it to empty and switching back to the primary. Once this is finished I turn the backup back on and then close the isolation valve between the two tanks. Many techincal divers do this valve drill on every dive where they are using doubles. It is great practice for reaching the valves, and it is great practice for recognizing what a regulator that is running out of air feels like.

Having said this I would NOT reccommend that any diver do this on a single tank. Reaching the valve is difficult, and if just after you turn off the tank you have some other problem or are bumped and loose track of just where the valve is you would be in a lot of trouble. If you were in close contact with your buddy and had talked about it on the surface before the dive then it may be OK, but even then I would still rather practice the air sharing drill with the air left on.

It should also be said that before each cave dive I do an air share with my buddy while we are in the water, the drill has each diver donating AND recieving so both divers actually do both skills. We don't turn the valves off but we do make sure that we can reach them and we make sure that the valves are opened fully. We also check our own valves several times during the dive.

Mark Vlahos

 

[Bruciebabe]

Just did OOA on the IANTD intro cave and it was a lot different than PADI.
Firstly you do it with empty lungs (PADI has a full breath) because in real life you will find you are out of air when you have just breathed out.
Secondly your buddy is swimming away from you so you have to catch him up (by using your hands to pull on the rocks because it causes less CO2 buildup) grab his fins and then climb up his kit till you get to his regulator. The distance to reach him increases during the course.
Thirdly you take the regulator out of his mouth because you know it is working, because it's gas mix is right for the situation and because it is on the long hose. Your buddy goes to his necklace reg. It appears that in real world situations of non tech divers the OOA diver usually takes the reg from his buddies mouth anyway so it makes sense to make it standard.
Fourthly you take three long slow breaths before doing anything else. This really works to settle down.
Fifth you are doing all this in a confined overhead environment.
Sixth you continue to buddy breathe till you exit the cave which means getting past all the natural obstacles along the way whilst attached to each other by a 2 metre hose.

 

[DeepSeaDan]

Hmmm...I just had a conversation with my brother-in-law about one of his nephews who just got his OW cert and went on a family trip. One of his first non-training dives, and he had a catastrophic primary reg hose failure. He calmly tapped on the DM's arm, alerted him to the situation, and (not sure which since my B-I-L is a non-diver and was not present) either took the DM's octo and made the ascent or did a C.E.S.A. In either case, I would say that the circumstances of his OOA situation were beyond his control, and his training did keep him alive that day.

I told my B-I-L to pass along the message to the nephew that based on that story alone, he could dive with me any day!

Gangrel,

I think I covered your point by indicating it is the diver's responsibility to insure their equipment is properly maintained. Was your B.I.L.'s nephew using rental equipment? If so, did he inspect it carefully? I'm not saying that equipment failiure can't happen, but that diligence of care will act to minimize the likelyhood of experiencing equipment-related problems. Hose failiures are very rare & are usually the result of excessive wear, age &/or mechanical damage. Hopefully, the student diver will revert to their training, as did your b.i.l.'s nephew, should such a failiure occurr.

Regards,
D.S.D.

 

[gangrel441]

Gangrel,

I think I covered your point by indicating it is the diver's responsibility to insure their equipment is properly maintained. Was your B.I.L.'s nephew using rental equipment? If so, did he inspect it carefully? I'm not saying that equipment failiure can't happen, but that diligence of care will act to minimize the likelyhood of experiencing equipment-related problems. Hose failiures are very rare & are usually the result of excessive wear, age &/or mechanical damage. Hopefully, the student diver will revert to their training, as did your b.i.l.'s nephew, should such a failiure occurr.

Regards,
D.S.D.

Valid points. My understanding is that it was one of his (if not the) first post-cert non-training dives. He was using rental gear, and I don't have all the facts, but I would say it is safe to say it probably had some wear and needed service. But being his first post OW cert dive, I don't know that it is safe to say he would know what unacceptable wear looks like on a reg hose, and the fact still remains that OOA training helped him out of the situation. Would it happen to me after logging over 65 dives and using my own gear? Probably not. But most new divers use rental gear, and a lot of gear problems get past them because they haven't seen what you and I have seen.

OTOH, I was on a liveaboard trip with a group of senior and very experienced divers earlier this year. I have a very difficult time believing these folks don't maintain their gear after many of the discussions we had that week. Yet between 4 of them, they had two hose failures that week. One of them had a save-a-dive kit including two primary reg hoses, and it turned out to be a non-issue, but this stuff does happen.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

Actually, I do recall having my air turned off during my OW training.

My original, completey, hypothetical question was more along the likes of really being out of air, but I think the question has been very well answered.

Again, this was just an intellectual exercise....I wasn't taking a position on this. But, of course, the way to learn is to ask questions.

My thanks to all the terrific DMs and Instructors who piped in.

Safe Diving

Jeff

 

[mrobinson]

Again, this was just an intellectual exercise....

Uh oh - did we pass Jeff? :05:

 

[DeepSeaDan]

Valid points. My understanding is that it was one of his (if not the) first post-cert non-training dives. He was using rental gear, and I don't have all the facts, but I would say it is safe to say it probably had some wear and needed service. But being his first post OW cert dive, I don't know that it is safe to say he would know what unacceptable wear looks like on a reg hose, and the fact still remains that OOA training helped him out of the situation. Would it happen to me after logging over 65 dives and using my own gear? Probably not. But most new divers use rental gear, and a lot of gear problems get past them because they haven't seen what you and I have seen.

OTOH, I was on a liveaboard trip with a group of senior and very experienced divers earlier this year. I have a very difficult time believing these folks don't maintain their gear after many of the discussions we had that week. Yet between 4 of them, they had two hose failures that week. One of them had a save-a-dive kit including two primary reg hoses, and it turned out to be a non-issue, but this stuff does happen.

Two failiures on one trip - yikes! They're cursed!

31 years of diving / 10 of those years commercial, & I've yet to experience one / see one.

The Gods must like me!

Best,
Dano

 

[gangrel441]

Two failiures on one trip - yikes! They're cursed!

31 years of diving / 10 of those years commercial, & I've yet to experience one / see one.

The Gods must like me!

Best,
Dano

First time I have seen one, let alone two...but believe me, when talking about divers of these calibur, I doubt that poor equipment maintenance was the cause...