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There is no way that teaching in my region is going to ever turn a profit, even with the LDS I associate with covering part of my insurance and taking into account "free compressed air". The drive to dive sites is an hour or more, one way, and to meet course standards and deliver a meaningful...

My RMV has been the same for decades, right around 0.7 cfm in dry suit & tech gear (0.55 cfm in 3 mm shorty & recreational gear). I'm fit (weekly multiple cardio sessions of an hour plus), I'm lean (< 12% bf), my resting heart rate is less than 50, and I'm very comfortable in the water. I've...

My limit is 2 a day, whether they be deep air or trimix, especially if I plan on diving the next day. I'd consider reducing it to 1 and multiple non-decompression dives if I was looking at more than 2 days of diving. But I tend to be diving cold water, with all of the attendant gear, and I'm...

I recently paid $2.30 CDN a cf for helium, but I suspect that it was "old stock" as the shop I bought it from doesn't sell a lot of helium. I thought it was pretty expensive at the time, but after reading this thread, I now feel like I got a great deal.

I second the advice to consider the Vancouver region, or southern Vancouver island. If you don't have to be too close to the core, housing affordability isn't too bad. YVR is a good international airport, great local diving, mountains for skiing & hiking, secure, decent health care and...

2019 I found an IT whose approach meshed with my learning & diving style, and took the time to renew my long lapsed active status as an instructor. I taught a few classes - and made sure that for every teaching dive I got in at least one fun dive. Took some dive buddies & students to dive...

Like many others, I have found the level of customer service & organization at the various LDS's that I have associated with over the last 2 decades to be underwhelming. The bright spots tended to be associated with individual staff or instructors, and only one owner. Highly motivated staff...

I use the Shearwater app which synchs up with my Perdix, as that seems to be a good way to carry around the basic dive details. I still "log" my dives in a paper format, but I use a hard-bound notebook (I like the Moleskine notebooks as they seem pretty durable) to log the dives. I have one...

I'm an AN/DP Instructor who dives BM only, and I've had a few SM students. My (reluctant) opinion is that the approach that the OP is asking about is doable, but that the student is not going to get the same value that they would if the AN/DP instructor was fully versed and had a lot of...

A lot of my local dives are looking at mud, the odd rock or stick - and by all accounts (even my own) pretty damn boring - but if I am not getting out diving I get twitchy. It's my thing. I can't explain it. I can't be bothered to analyze it. That might ruin it.

u Nothing exciting. One time was simply when a buddy grabbed his necklaced reg and pulling on it while trying to sort out four regs clustered over the right shoulder. He was pretty frustrated, and not being careful, and when he pulled on the reg, it came off the necklace. Another time was on...

I have been involved in only 1 real life OOG situation, and the distance between myself and the OOG individual was enough of a distance away that I was able to manage the donate (which was alternate, and before I was tech trained and configured). I have subsequently been in and observed real...

Other than occasionally being asked for nitrox or advanced nitrox certification when getting various nitrox or deco gas fills at shops I don't normally frequent, I don't think I've ever had to show anything other than OW certification with one exception. Many of the LDS organized trips that I...

My "buddy" protocols vary based on the dive plan and buddy. If I am leading the dive and running the compass, and diving with my usual dive buddies (experienced, used to diving with each other, well trained & skilled) then I tend not to check very often. In that case it is explicitly the...

You are correct, I was looking at (actually remembering, and not looking at, which is why I did not catch my error myself) an air table, not an EAN table. That was just a lesson relearned about relying on memory.

@DeepSeaExplorer, I agree with your second point, but wonder if your first paragraph is entirely correct given the increasing availability of 100 cf rental cylinders and the number of recreational side-mount divers I see. Most divers I know can get 60+ minutes at 60' on a 100cf cylinder in warm...

The more familiar I am with the dive team and the dive site, the more casual the planning. To the point where we can say something like "The usual 70 minute circuit?" and we all know what the profile, bearings, and way points will be. With "new" dive buddies I will be more explicit, and we...

There are benefits to taking courses from your LDS that aren't always related to the course content. I found the AOW course to be very useful, as I took it after completing my OW dives in Cozumel. AOW gave me the chance to get introduced to (1) cold water gear & cold water, (2) two local dive...

This really is an "each to their own" decision. I suspect different communities will have their own rules of thumb. The first rule of thumb that I have picked up, thanks to being trained by an agency that used the US Navy Tables (at the time), is that if the surface interval is less than ten...

Depends on the gas analyzer, but most modern analyzers will analyze the fraction of the gas stream and therefore don't need altitude adjustments. Some of the older gas analyzers which needed a very specific flow rate of gas would read low (I live at altitude & often dive at ~4,500'+ elevation...