Diving with full facemask

[MattWilliams]

i am pretty new to diving and want to guy a full face mask,
i want to know do you need to do coarse before diving with one?
Thanks

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I dunno about a course, but you do need training. If your mask floods, you won't be able to breathe until you take it off and deploy a backup regulator. Therefore you need to be practiced (at a minimum) at how to don it, how to remove it, and how to recover from a flood. You should also be practiced at being able to maintain your buoyancy underwater while task loaded and without a mask on.

That isn't something you want to learn on your own ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[kotik]

I'm betting the OP is just using the board as a vehicle to promote himself about his activities unrelated to diving, he could probably care less about a face mask, SPG, or whatever.

It got edited pretty quick, but this post started as one of a burst of several that all had a one line remark related to diving, then a Youtube link to show everyone how "brutal" he is...

 

[g1138]

You also should be able to scuba maskless for those very reasons stated above.
Definitely a good choice to get an instructor or mentor whose very familiar with full face mask use, to cover basics with you.

I don't really see FFM's as ideal for recreational diving.

 

[Texasguy]

Are there any pro's to diving with a full mask?

 

[chrpai]

IMO, they are an unreliable gimmick. A skills crutch. I haven't dove one myself but I have a buddy that I trust who has and he says it was a POS.

Good buddy skills, hand signals, stay close together, use wet wipes and you should be good to go.

 

[ElGaucho]

Im actually interested in a bit more info on people diving full face masks because my girlfriend is epileptic and she wants to dive. When I say epileptic though, Im talking about someone who has had one seizure in her life. But still, she is a low risk epileptic. She does mountain climbing (freestyle), and she is a dancer that does aerial work. Believe me, she knows the risks and she is willing to take them, and that´s the way she chooses to live.

Now, she wants to go diving, and I know one way of minimizing risk is not working with high O2 partial pressures (even rec nitrox would not be advisable in this case). But I was thinking also a FFM could mitigate the remaining risk. If she does have some sort of underwater seizure, a FFM could be the answer.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I am not an advocate of most FFMs for recreational diving. They are common in public safety diving due to their use of comms and potential to be diving in contaminated water environments, but in my opinion the average part time dive rescue squad member would probably be more effective without one.

The downsides are that they are usually large volume masks and are positively buoyant unless you use a weight kit. Unless you have a surface breathing valve it also means you are breathing off the reg before you submerge, so there is extra gas consumption as well as far greater potential for a freeze flow in ice diving or very cold water.

You also can't share gas in the normal manner as your primary reg is not available to an OOA diver, and if you need to bail out to your octo, or a buddy's octo, you'll need to remove the mask. Consequently, you need to be comfortable breathing without a mask, and you'll need to carry a back up mask that you'll don and use while sharing gas.

Another potential concern is that some full face masks come in a positive pressure version and that adds other concerns due to greater gas use.

----

That said, the Kirby Morgan M-48 is a hybrid mask that uses a normal mask covering your eyes and nose with a lower oral mask with a removable pod. It is very amenable to recreational and some forms of technical diving. The 2 cavity design of the mask allows you to:

1) dive the mask as a full face mask with full com capability if you want that,
2) dive the mask with the lower pod flooded, still breathing off the second stage via a mouthpiece (not sure why you'd do that, but you could), or
3) completely remove the lower pod to breath off another regulator, share gas, etc.

And you can easily remove the pod, re-attach the pod and de-water the mask to go back to full face mode underwater.

The M-48 is also comparatively low volume with a good field of view and does not have excessively positive buoyancy.

Perhaps best of all, you can buy just the mask and use your own regulator.

M-48 SuperMask | Kirby Morgan

Kirby Morgan has also created a more rugged version with a nose pinch device, a more durable mask frame (but less visibility) and mount points for lights and cameras. I suspect it's aimed at the commercial market somewhere in the same general range as the EXO-26.

M-48 Mod 1 | Kirby Morgan

 

[ChrisMan]

I did a PADI distinctive in full face mask with Mermaids in Thailand. It's not for everyone, and can be a little uncomfortable (large volume of air on head means your neck muscles can start to ache after a while). That said, I enjoyed it, but definitely recommend some training of some sort as the drills are quite different as someone already mentioned.

 

[RJP]

I'm betting the OP is just using the board as a vehicle to promote himself about his activities unrelated to diving, he could probably care less about a face mask, SPG, or whatever.

It got edited pretty quick, but this post started as one of a burst of several that all had a one line remark related to diving, then a Youtube link to show everyone how "brutal" he is...

He's since moved his You-Tube link to his profile/status so it appears NEXT TO his posts.