elan
Contributor
2 of us were taking the course with Steve over the past 2 weekends and I decided to put a short report.
Day 1
In the morning we decided to take most of the theory out of the way.
Fast forwarding all the generic conversations about what GUE is etc which we went through in Fundamentals
And we are on the topic of technical details about motors batteries and other parts. We disassembled our scooters and Steve is going through the differences and similarities of SS and Gavin (one of us had an SS and one Gavin) This topic is a lot of fun for as as both of us like fixing mechanical devices. Having taken the scooter workshop, the topic is very familiar but we still learn new things. Following the technical details and maintenance discussion we started making proper tow cords and leashes. Whatever cords we had before "go to the garbage" and we are making nice and properly set ones. Going forward the properly setup towing cord and a the leash has fixed half of the issues that I had before the course. We went through different types of bolt snap fixing and picked one for the training.
Now we have the scooters ready and we talk about the team formations underwater and all the procedures that we would have to go through during our training dives.
We were super happy that GUE has changed the temporarily stowing procedure and now we do not have to hold the scooter between the legs. That very position would make us failing the course on the very first day, unconditionally
So we put all the theory out of the way (except dive planning) and now it's the in water time.
First exercise is what we had in the Fundamentals: our lovely valve drills and S-drills. What to say we sucked
Although we did the drills, adding another task of holding the parked scooter in the parked position distracts a lot in the beginning We not have to learn the positioning and kicking
while controlling the scooter at the same time.
Thank God it is a recreational course and we have a +-5 ft window for all the exercises. To make sure we nail down different scooter positioning Steve makes us repeat them
throughout all the dives until we manage it.
After the drill we start learning new things: starting the movement from the temp position, different types of turns, crash avoidance techniques.
Now it's time to have a run on the scooter trying to match our speeds. Again we sucked, start-stop and fooling with the pitch was the name of the game.
Debrief, Steve stresses the point that we should be capable of doing all our flow checks and communication while maintaining our formation and staying on the trigger the whole time.
There should be no jerking and we should be able to fine-tune our speed with the body posture, we should be capable of controlling the scooter with both left and right hands.
No we do a couple of runs around the quarry paying attention to the details and doing what he has said. It was way better and we paid more attention to the communication,
the depths changes were not that severe either. At the end of each dive we had a minimum deco ascend, once with the scooter parked and the other time with the scooter in a temp position. Now thou realize that this thing has a mass and inertia and it does not want to start or stop moving upon you will and making sharp stops at 10ft increments is not as easy
I felt that I needed to shorten my cord a bit more which I did in preparation for day 2.
We were pretty tired after day 1 and it was a lot to think about. We agreed to start the following day 1 hour earlier as we had to finish before 6pm so we can take our pool test and drive back to Toronto.
Day 2:
Day 2 started with the leftovers of the theory: Dive Planning. Although it seems to be very simple there are some gotchas and one needs to follow the exact order of the calculations
presented in the manual. In the ideal world the calculations should match no matter which way you do them but when rounding takes place it is important to follow the order.
We created a dive plan for our experience dive and were grateful we both had LP108 for the course which gave us enough gas and reserve. For DVP 1 one cannot use stages so
what you have on the back is all what you have.
The dive portion of the second day involved all kinds of towing and emergency situation handling. OOA, dead scooter towing, operating the trigger wheel without the trigger, runaway DPV, OOA buddy towing, First dive we sucked again 5 ft window saved us again but it was not acceptable and during debrief Steve has stressed out that we should work more as a team, pretend he was not there and pay more attention to our buoyancy. Our towing was also off and we realized that successful towing mostly depends upon the diver being towed. If he executes improper techniques the whole towing will be ugly. We had to repeat that exercise many times until we had a good grasp on the techniques. On the second dive we were payed more attention to the buoyancy, speed matching and towing techniques. The turns became more natural and we could do our flow checks while staying on the trigger.
The second day dive was completed with the SMB deployment and minimum deco with deployed SMBs while controlling the parked scooter at the same time.
Steve was checking our awareness after every dive asking us what was happening at some points of dive, how long it took us to do such and such exercise end so on.
It really did not help to make our dive relaxing. Every time you have the scooter out of control while executing a drill you feel right away that it was kicked by Steve reminding
that it must be under control.
We finished our day with the exam, the swim and the breath hold test. We also had a long drive back home
It was a tiring weekend but we learned a lot and . we had to do a homework and plan few dives at home
Day 3:
This is where all the stuff learned in the previous 2 days had to pay off..
Morning and we met in Brockville at the well known park All the preparations are done, the voltages are measured and the gas is analysed. The scooters are in the water.
The dive supposed to include an approach portion, drift and swimming around the wreck. This is where all our efforts were really paying off. No hassles, staying on the trigger all
the time checking the valves and pressure, all is done on the trigger.
We approach at 30ft for 15 mins, then descend to 90 ft and relax. Drifting using the scooter here and there for approaching to the artifacts that we find on the bottom
Bottles are everywhere, found few bigger things like a toilet, a what I believe was a door frame, a small plate with a 1920 stamp on it...
No we did not take the toilet back home for installation in the HB, I think we have enough of that stuff here
.
And no, we have not found the truck as we were not even looking We just drifted to the Gaskin and scootered around for quite some time. Gear hunting was next and Steve did find a octo retainer We should have kept it and sell it on e-bay .
Coming back stowing the scooters into the parking position, and doing minimum deco ascend. Crash avoidance techniques were handy as there were a lot of open water students in the water doing their drills.
It was a bit tiring as we still put a lot of effort and it is not our second nature yet. A short debrief and handshaking has completed the 3rd and the last day of the course. We definitely got hooked....
We were lucky that we did not have time to develop bad habits...
---------- Post added ----------
Could moderators change the title and put June instead of May This is what happens when you post at night...
Day 1
In the morning we decided to take most of the theory out of the way.
Fast forwarding all the generic conversations about what GUE is etc which we went through in Fundamentals
And we are on the topic of technical details about motors batteries and other parts. We disassembled our scooters and Steve is going through the differences and similarities of SS and Gavin (one of us had an SS and one Gavin) This topic is a lot of fun for as as both of us like fixing mechanical devices. Having taken the scooter workshop, the topic is very familiar but we still learn new things. Following the technical details and maintenance discussion we started making proper tow cords and leashes. Whatever cords we had before "go to the garbage" and we are making nice and properly set ones. Going forward the properly setup towing cord and a the leash has fixed half of the issues that I had before the course. We went through different types of bolt snap fixing and picked one for the training.Now we have the scooters ready and we talk about the team formations underwater and all the procedures that we would have to go through during our training dives.
We were super happy that GUE has changed the temporarily stowing procedure and now we do not have to hold the scooter between the legs. That very position would make us failing the course on the very first day, unconditionally
So we put all the theory out of the way (except dive planning) and now it's the in water time.
First exercise is what we had in the Fundamentals: our lovely valve drills and S-drills. What to say we sucked
Although we did the drills, adding another task of holding the parked scooter in the parked position distracts a lot in the beginning
We not have to learn the positioning and kicking while controlling the scooter at the same time.
Thank God it is a recreational course and we have a +-5 ft window for all the exercises. To make sure we nail down different scooter positioning Steve makes us repeat them
throughout all the dives until we manage it.
After the drill we start learning new things: starting the movement from the temp position, different types of turns, crash avoidance techniques.
Now it's time to have a run on the scooter trying to match our speeds. Again we sucked, start-stop and fooling with the pitch was the name of the game.
Debrief, Steve stresses the point that we should be capable of doing all our flow checks and communication while maintaining our formation and staying on the trigger the whole time.
There should be no jerking and we should be able to fine-tune our speed with the body posture, we should be capable of controlling the scooter with both left and right hands.
No we do a couple of runs around the quarry paying attention to the details and doing what he has said. It was way better and we paid more attention to the communication,
the depths changes were not that severe either. At the end of each dive we had a minimum deco ascend, once with the scooter parked and the other time with the scooter in a temp position. Now thou realize that this thing has a mass and inertia and it does not want to start or stop moving upon you will and making sharp stops at 10ft increments is not as easy
I felt that I needed to shorten my cord a bit more which I did in preparation for day 2.
We were pretty tired after day 1 and it was a lot to think about. We agreed to start the following day 1 hour earlier as we had to finish before 6pm so we can take our pool test and drive back to Toronto.
Day 2:
Day 2 started with the leftovers of the theory: Dive Planning. Although it seems to be very simple there are some gotchas and one needs to follow the exact order of the calculations
presented in the manual. In the ideal world the calculations should match no matter which way you do them but when rounding takes place it is important to follow the order.
We created a dive plan for our experience dive and were grateful we both had LP108 for the course which gave us enough gas and reserve. For DVP 1 one cannot use stages so
what you have on the back is all what you have.
The dive portion of the second day involved all kinds of towing and emergency situation handling. OOA, dead scooter towing, operating the trigger wheel without the trigger, runaway DPV, OOA buddy towing, First dive we sucked again 5 ft window saved us again but it was not acceptable and during debrief Steve has stressed out that we should work more as a team, pretend he was not there and pay more attention to our buoyancy. Our towing was also off and we realized that successful towing mostly depends upon the diver being towed. If he executes improper techniques the whole towing will be ugly. We had to repeat that exercise many times until we had a good grasp on the techniques. On the second dive we were payed more attention to the buoyancy, speed matching and towing techniques. The turns became more natural and we could do our flow checks while staying on the trigger.
The second day dive was completed with the SMB deployment and minimum deco with deployed SMBs while controlling the parked scooter at the same time.
Steve was checking our awareness after every dive asking us what was happening at some points of dive, how long it took us to do such and such exercise end so on.
It really did not help to make our dive relaxing
. Every time you have the scooter out of control while executing a drill you feel right away that it was kicked by Steve reminding that it must be under control.
We finished our day with the exam, the swim and the breath hold test. We also had a long drive back home
It was a tiring weekend but we learned a lot and . we had to do a homework and plan few dives at home
Day 3:
This is where all the stuff learned in the previous 2 days had to pay off
..Morning and we met in Brockville at the well known park All the preparations are done, the voltages are measured and the gas is analysed. The scooters are in the water.
The dive supposed to include an approach portion, drift and swimming around the wreck. This is where all our efforts were really paying off. No hassles, staying on the trigger all
the time checking the valves and pressure, all is done on the trigger.
We approach at 30ft for 15 mins, then descend to 90 ft and relax. Drifting using the scooter here and there for approaching to the artifacts that we find on the bottom
Bottles are everywhere, found few bigger things like a toilet, a what I believe was a door frame, a small plate with a 1920 stamp on it...
No we did not take the toilet back home for installation in the HB, I think we have enough of that stuff here
.And no, we have not found the truck as we were not even looking
We just drifted to the Gaskin and scootered around for quite some time. Gear hunting was next and Steve did find a octo retainer We should have kept it and sell it on e-bay .Coming back stowing the scooters into the parking position, and doing minimum deco ascend. Crash avoidance techniques were handy as there were a lot of open water students in the water doing their drills.
It was a bit tiring as we still put a lot of effort and it is not our second nature yet. A short debrief and handshaking has completed the 3rd and the last day of the course. We definitely got hooked....
We were lucky that we did not have time to develop bad habits
...---------- Post added ----------
Could moderators change the title and put June instead of May
This is what happens when you post at night... 
