Advanced training questions

[scagrotto]

You don't need gas planning

I think I'm being misunderstood.

I don't see a lot of room for people to misunderstand what you said.

Our dive plan calls for turning our dive at 2000 ... All we did is dive the plan and watch our SPG's.

Maybe it's you that's misunderstanding something. What you described in the quote directly above is gas planning. It's rudimentary planning that uses a cookie cutter approach (and doesn't specify if you'll head directly back to the boat or entry, or if you'll burn more gas when you're back at 30 or 40'), but it is planning. Personally I agree that the planning requirements for a lot of simple recreational diving is fairly basic. If there's something interesting that comes up to 20' I'll generally be back up there fairly early because I prefer my dives to be long instead of deep. That said, not recognizing that there's still a minimum planning requirement or not understanding how to develop the plan are significant deficiencies. A rudimentary plan may work perfectly well for a simple dive, but an inadequate plan won't. I trust that you'll agree that it's at least a little bit important to recognize when your plan is inadequate?

 

[EFX]

I just returned from a trip to the Turks-Caicos islands where I did 12 dives on the walls and reefs. I was a bit taken back by the various responses to my last post. My comment that "no gas planning is needed" has been taken out of context. I agree completely that some sort of gas planning is needed and even critical on deeper dives. I was refering to the particular case where SAC and SRV is required to safely complete the dive. I was thinking of all the dives I've done on charters where this particular type of plan is never done at that time, not even by more experienced divers. I know my SAC and SRV but I have enough experience to know how long an AL80 will last at a particular depth. I also talk to my buddies and try to find out how experienced they are to anticipate possible future problems. While diving I frequently monitor mine and my buddies SPG's and occasionally have had to cut short the dive to get us both safely on the boat. I actually did this type of planning on the trip where my buddy (not my regular buddy) had much higher air consumption than I had. No SAC or SRV's were determined before hand. Thanks for all the comments. I learned some useful information that I can apply on my dives.

 

[boulderjohn]

I have a PADI OW cert. with about 25 dives. I am looking at some dives here in Australia that are past my 18m depth and want to get some training in deep diving. I know I could take the PADI AOW but I was looking to see if I could bypass that and get specific, focused training in just deep diving.

I have been looking and I know that other agencies, SSI/SDI, have a different path to Advanced open water status. Could I as a PADI OW diver cross over and start taking specialty courses from these other companies? Has anyone else done this? What was your experience? Other thoughts? What do you say DIR crowd, should I go whole HOG and dive into a GUE fundamentals course?

I would like to take a few seconds to try to respond to the original post, if that is permitted.

I know this is not precisely what you asked, but perhaps it will help.

Are you going to be on a liveaboard in Australia? Is that why you are asking? I ask this because I was on a liveaboard in Australia only a couple of days before you wrote your post. Two of the divers on the trip elected to do their AOW on board using the boat's staff. I sometimes passed them as they sat at a table going over their knowledge reviews, and I was sometimes near them when they were doing their dives. I frankly thought the instructor was being very thorough. I think the two divers got good instruction. If you are indeed going on a liveaboard and want to focus on deep diving, then you can do the AOW followed by the deep specialty on the boat, depending upon how long you are going to be on the boat.

On the other hand, the dives there are not all that deep. They usually start deeper than 18 meters, but we never hit 30 meters, and we only came close to that a couple of times. On those occasions, I was with people with adequate training for that depth, and no one else from the boat went that deep. At the other extreme, one of the customers presented a scuba diving card, which limited her to shallow dives with a professional in attendance. She did just fine, diving with her own personal dive guide every time, with no extra charge.

 

[Storker]

even someone who hasn't completed OW class yet is capable of doing it provided you do a reasonable job of explaining to them how to

If they're geeky enough (You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Well, then who the hell else are you talking - You talking to me?), they can even work it out themselves while reading up for OW class...