AOW last weekend

[Dave in PA]

I successfully completed my AOW last weekend. I think the one class that helped me the most was Peak Performance Bouyancy. The fact that my instructor did that one first and kept returning to it during each subsequent dive really cemented the breathing techniques. I downloaded my dive profiles and was pleasantly surprised that I am now working on a 'fine toothed saw tooth' profile of about 3' - 5' differences in depth. Compared to where I was just a few dives ago (8' - 10'). By better controlling my bouyancy, my SAC rate is just below .5 cu ft/min, too. According to my computer, my dive times are now limited to No Decompression Limits instead of available air!

 

[voop]

Congrattulations! I am glad that you had fun and profited from your AOW. I agree, that an AOW -- if done correctly -- should be a great way of getting your bouyancy worked on.

When I teach a PADI AOW-course, I consider it as "a bouyancy-course, where gradually more tasks are thrown at the students while they're praticing bouyancy". Starting with PPB, the next step could be navigation (to use a compas and to do meaningfull distance-measures, you need a nice horizontal trim), search-and-recovery (hey, you're hovering while attaching, inflating and controlling that lift-bag) -- and so on.

It's great to reach the point you're at now, isn't it? Where lack of air is no longer what drags you to the surface......guess it's time to crack open that Nitrox-course now....

 

[Jersey Chris]

Congrats Dave.. now are you ready for a night dive at Dutch ?? :wavey:

 

[Dave in PA]

Voop, Nitrox is soon, VERY soon . I want to do a rescue course first.

Chris, Deffinately, the night dive we did was only 30 minutes, and we went from platform to the bus back to the platform to the wall. Something I've done several times in the past, but it was a brand new experience at night.

 

[BluOrchid2]

Hey Dave, congratulations. DH and I also did our AOW this past weekend. I had wanted PPB to be one of our electives, but we ended up with Wreck, Photography, and Altitude. Congrats on perfecting your buoyancy; that's something I still really want to hone my skills on.

 

[^*^BATMAN^*^]

Hey Dave, congratulations. DH and I also did our AOW this past weekend. I had wanted PPB to be one of our electives, but we ended up with Wreck, Photography, and Altitude. Congrats on perfecting your buoyancy; that's something I still really want to hone my skills on.

thats odd, the LDS in my area, does, PPB, nav, night, deep and wreck. in my experiance, that is it.

 

[BluOrchid2]

My LDS can do the Altitude elective because Beaver Lake, AR, where we go for open water dives, is above 1,000 ft. The Photography dive merely involved taking some pictures during the dive. And the Wreck Dive is a sunken school bus. Is that what you were commenting on?

 

[Dave in PA]

We did PPB, nav, night, deep and wreck, in that order. I deffinately will not say I've perfected my bouyancy, just showing visible improvement. My OW instructor was able to hover upside down in 9 feet of water, just about 18" off the bottom of the pool.

He is my bouyancy control inspiration!

 

[Linthorn]

I did an AOW in Bainbridge. We did Deep, Nav, PPB, Wreck, and Search & Recovery. All of my previous dives were tropical so PA was a pretty big change. S&R was a challenge given that viz was 6" at times, and newbies can kick up a lot of silt.

Looking through the adventure dives I had a thought: The AWARE Fish ID dive is probably real easy in quarries:

Student: “I think I saw a fish”

Instructor: “What did it look like?”

Student: “Kinda brown like the water, only moving”

Instructor: “Yep, that’s a fish. Write it down”

 

[DiveTyme]

Congrats to all the new AOW divers!
Tim