how to pressure group / deep dive

[ScubaToneDog]

I guess my statment was written kind of erroneously. I meant the "you" as in Adjuster-jd not you as in you reading this.

My whole point was the assumptions in favor of the student over the instructor. We only know what Adjuster-jd is telling us and accept it as truth. The simple answer was for him to talk to his instructor, not for everyone to analyze his dive only to fault his instructor as being careless. How do we know that Adjuster-jd didnt have trouble with his bouyancy and his instructor didnt have to chase him down to 110'?

I have heard, and read, hundreds of instructor horror stories and it makes me wonder....if there are that many "bad" instructors out there then it would be safe to assume that there are thousands upon thousands of horrible divers.

So if someone is a bad diver then we shouldnt blame them for their lack of ability to learn to dive safely, we should dismiss it as the fault of a bad instructor.

So poor spelling and typo's are the fault of the keyboard and not me. So my erroneious post was not me it was my computers fault!

By faulting his instructor we encourage him to not take responsibility for his own safety and blame it on his training.

This is just my opinion.

 

[Charlie99]

adjuster-jd once bubbled...
When I discussed asking the instructor how to log the dive, his response was that without using a wheel, or computer there really was no way to determine this information for my logbook... So for those two dives, I have no details as to pressure group.

So, where do I go from here? I'll probably go back home, purchase a computer (likely from Leisurepro (flame suit on) and seek out a little more instruction from my LDS so I can actually learn how to properly plan and dive a multilevel dive.. Did I get my money's worth for the AOW class - well that depends - I did get a AOW C-card out of it and for some people only the card matters. For me, the AOW card is yet another license to learn, and obviously I have a lot more to learn.

While not taught or sanctioned by PADI, you can use the RDP table to do a rough plan for a multilevel dive. Just string together the multiple levels and times as a series of dives, each with a 0 minute surface interval between them. There are probably some profiles where this can give erroneous results, but it works for the normal method of deep first, then going shallower in a couple additional steps.

A more accurate way to plan your multilevel dives is to run one of the decompression programs available, such as VPM, or GAP. GAP is available for download at www.gap-software.com.

In case you haven't figured out why some of us respond so harshly, the secret is that we've made the same errors ourselves.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Well, since you asked, you might consider hanging out at Gilboa with some of the folks from the board.

 

[adjuster-jd]

I'd say there's a pretty good chance of me visiting Gilboa once or twice this summer. It's about 2 1/2 hours or so from me, but so are White Star (where I did my OW dives) and Portage. It sure will be a shock going back to that after diving on Maui, but that's about the the best I'll have until next summer....

Thanks Mike..

 

[chrpai]

Charlie99 once bubbled...
In case you haven't figured out why some of us respond so harshly, the secret is that we've made the same errors ourselves.

But not nessecarily the same errors.

On my AOW deep dive the instructor did violate training standards by taking me to 120 feet ( Prospect Ocho Rios Jamaica ) but I didn't know that was a violation. Besides the real FUBAR on that dive was all my fault. It was an all inclusive and I finally stopped fighting the divemaster from setting up my gear for me. ( Relax mon, you are on vacation.... yuck!! ) Well I finally let him do it, and wouldnt you know he turned my tank off ( or part way off I'm not sure ) and we got down to about 20' when my instructor asked to see my guage. The needle was moving all over the place and I didn't know what that meant yet. I show him the guage and give an OK sign ( duh ) he signals stop, danger and proceeds to open my valve for me. Checks my guage again and signals ok, lets go down.

The rest of the dive went well except when I caught him trying to cheat me on one the skills test. (I never lose tic-tac-toe )

 

[radagalf]

The reason you won't read it is because it is not on the students log pages.

It is in the instructor manual only, thus only instructors know you have to complete it and ensure that it was done. This isn't the best way, but it is how its done.

 

[Iruka]

if he wasn't shown how to plan a deep dive...but I doubt the dive was dangerous. Of course, an advanced diver SHOULD be able to determine the dive profile in advance, but in reality in a lot of resort locations (Guam, in my case) MANY of the divers aren't really capable of much more than following their guide. The guides generally know to leave enough NDL time in the dive to account for a diver who (against instructions) goes a bit deeper or whatever. It would be great if all divers were competent, but that isn't the case and most likely never will be. We give a dive profile briefing, but once we get back to the shop, WE have to draw a dive profile/pressure group sheet to show to the divers...because many of them can't use the tables themselves. Or, as in the original poster's situation, we'll take them on a deep dive, and they'll pull out their RDP table and get this confused look on their faces when they try to figure out, for example, 120' for 45 minutes. We explain that the actual dive was more like 120' for 5 minutes, 60' for 15 minutes, 30' for 20 minutes and 5 minutes (or more) as a safety stop. In this area, most tropical reef diving is something like that....we might even do the entire "return" portion of the dive at 15~20'....essentially half the dive is a safety stop...lots of nice coral, pretty fish, etc to look at. I always explain to my students that the RDP tables are fine for relatively SHALLOW diving...but not much use for deep dives, due to the very short NDL times. I'd recommend that adjuster-jd either get a computer or learn to use the RDP wheel if 1) he plans on going deep in the future and 2) REALLY, REALLY wants to have the pressure group letters included in his log book.
Today I did dive #4322 without "incident"...getting a couple divers' attention during the dive to bring them up a bit, or down a bit, depending on the situation. Often the only pre-dive interraction we have with customers is the 30-minute boat ride to the dive site...enough to make sure they have their gear put together correctly, assess who is most likely to be our "challenge" for the day, give a briefing, feed them cookies and juice...that's about it. Not really feasible to try to TEACH them the RDP in that time frame.
(sorry for this being kind of long)

 

[MikeFerrara]

Iruka once bubbled...
MANY of the divers aren't really capable of much more than following their guide. The guides generally know to leave enough NDL time in the dive to account for a diver who (against instructions) goes a bit deeper or whatever. It would be great if all divers were competent, but that isn't the case and most likely never will be. We give a dive profile briefing, but once we get back to the shop, WE have to draw a dive profile/pressure group sheet to show to the divers...because many of them can't use the tables themselves. Or, as in the original poster's situation, we'll take them on a deep dive, and they'll pull out their RDP table and get this confused look on their faces when they try to figure out, for example, 120' for 45 minutes. We explain that the actual dive was more like 120' for 5 minutes, 60' for 15 minutes, 30' for 20 minutes and 5 minutes (or more) as a safety stop. In this area, most tropical reef diving is something like that....

That illustrates my point pretty well. It seems to me that a lot of divers are trained in such a way that assumes they'll be diving with some one to hold their hand.

I call it underwater sight-seeing. There isn't anything wrong with it but it isn't diving by any stretch of the imagination. There is though some thing wrong with assuming this is the kind of diving a daver is going to do when you train him. Just as underwater sight-seeing isn't diving this kind of training isn't training.

 

[chrpai]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...

I call it underwater sight-seeing. There isn't anything wrong with it but it isn't diving by any stretch of the imagination.

I agree. I know PADI has something called "Scuba Diver" which is exactly that... yet I rarely see a shop advertise it and I havn't met anyone who holds the card yet. I wonder why. It would seem many people who are blue water vacation divers would fit this catagory.

 

[fmansur]

--You are right the instructor probably does this 100 times a year -and unless he has a written waivor from the agency to do it this way there should be punitive or corrective action on the part of the agency for each and every incedent. The standards exist to insure the safety and quality of training of the student. --


Why doesn´t anybody shows the instructor the concerns we had here, and listens to what he has to say? This can help him to be a "safer" instructor, and there´s no need to "burn" him without even listening to what he has to say...

Regards

Fábio