PADI AOW Started; Now What?

[idocsteve]

The only thing not mentioned that is fairly important for PADI AOW is that (to the best of my knowledge), deep and nav are required, night used to be but is now optional, so you have to do the first two and then you can pick 3 others.

Nitrox cannot be one of the 5 specialites but you can do Nitrox along with your AOW. It used to be that you had to actually dive 2 Nitrox tanks but PADI did away with that some time ago.

 

[Quero]

SDI has you do 5 different courses to get AOW.... seems like a hugh difference in what each agency requires.

Some of it is just a difference in terminology. Like PADI, SDI also requires only 5 dives for their Advanced Adventure Diver cert, but they call them Specialties (and not Adventure Dives as PADI does). The major difference between SDI and PADI requirements is that for the SDI cert, the diver has to have a minimum of 25 dives along with those 5 course dives, whereas for PADI there is no minimum number of dives for certification, only the 5 course dives.

 

[Quero]

The only thing not mentioned that is fairly important for PADI AOW is that (to the best of my knowledge), deep and nav are required, night used to be but is now optional, so you have to do the first two and then you can pick 3 others.

Nitrox cannot be one of the 5 specialites but you can do Nitrox along with your AOW. It used to be that you had to actually dive 2 Nitrox tanks but PADI did away with that some time ago.

Almost correct. Both Deep and Nav are required. Night is no longer required since it's not permitted in some countries/dive regions, meaning that many instructors would have to ask for special dispensations to issue AOW certs without a night dive, and it was decided years ago that it would be easier to change the rules than to make hundreds and hundreds of instructors go through the dispensation process.

However, Nitrox can indeed be counted towards the AOW cert, but there MUST be a dive associated with it. Nitrox courses that are undertaken with no dives at all cannot be used for AOW.

 

[idocsteve]

However, Nitrox can indeed be counted towards the AOW cert, but there MUST be a dive associated with it. Nitrox courses that are undertaken with no dives at all cannot be used for AOW.

I was completely unaware that Nitrox could be one of the 5 specialties required for a PADI AOW certification.

I'm wondering if this is something new? It wasn't listed in my AOW textbook when I took it several years ago and I don't believe it was a choice for my girlfriend when she got her AOW just a few short months ago.

 

[gzscuba]

Hi Aerosynth,
I would suggest that you not get too worried about all of the certifications that are out there. As mentioned by Garrobo, many of the classes/certs are not as necessary as PADI would have you believe. It's been a while, but I think one of the more useful things from my AOW was the night dive experience. Night diving took a bit of getting accustomed to. Having said that, I really feel that after a certain point, you really just need to go out and dive.

Here are the classes that I have taken (and thinking about) since AOW and some of the reasons for taking them.

-Recreational Nitrox - so that we could dive with nitrox up to 40%
-Drysuit - most places won't rent you a drysuit without a drysuit cert and the skills are useful. Some dive shops will give you a free drysuit class with the purchase of a drysuit.
-Tides & current - If you dive in an area affected by tidal exchanges (Puget Sound is a great example), then you really need to be able to predict the currents to dive safely. Probably not an issue for you.
-Rescue - I haven't taken it yet, but I could see that rescue procedures are best taught in a formal setting.

Most other skills you can "pick up along the way".
Best of luck.
-Greg

 

[Quero]

I was completely unaware that Nitrox could be one of the 5 specialties required for a PADI AOW certification.

I'm wondering if this is something new? It wasn't listed in my AOW textbook when I took it several years ago and I don't believe it was a choice for my girlfriend when she got her AOW just a few short months ago.

It's not in the Adventures with Diving manual. Nitrox requires a separate manual, and by doing Chapter 1 of the manual (the first half of the book) and a dive on Nitrox, it can be counted as part of the AOW. If only one chapter and a dive are done in this way, the entire specialty isn't completed, though the student can still dive with Nitrox 32 under the supervision of a dive pro.

Instructors are not required to offer all possible Adventure Dives. It could be that your girlfriend's instructor didn't have the credentials to teach Nitrox, for example, and in that case it couldn't be one of the possible course modules. As a parallel, I am not credentialed to teach DPV, so even though it's possible for DPV to be part of the AOW, I can't offer it to my own AOW students. Or it could be that getting a Nitrox fill wasn't especially easy for the instructor, so doing a dive on Nitrox would be difficult logistically. As a parallel, I don't teach Dry Suit here in Thailand as an Adventure Dive. As you might imagine, dry suits aren't standard issue around here, and though it is possible to dive in a dry suit even in tropical water, logistically, for me to offer a Dry Suit Adventure Dive as part of AOW is impractical.

 

[idocsteve]

It's not in the Adventures with Diving manual. Nitrox requires a separate manual, and by doing Chapter 1 of the manual (the first half of the book) and a dive on Nitrox, it can be counted as part of the AOW. If only one chapter and a dive are done in this way, the entire specialty isn't completed, though the student can still dive with Nitrox 32 under the supervision of a dive pro.

Ah, it's a limited Nitrox certification.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Atticus Lake]

... The deep and night specialties seem a little silly to me. I do somewhat look forward to ppb, s/r, and nav...

You're doing the same 5 as me... ;-)

The PADI terminology can be a little confusing. Their philosophy seems to be to divide the whole program into baby steps, to make it as accessible as possible; this approach has pros and cons. As BlueSparkle said, it helps when you realize that AOW is really "basic plus".

The 5 dives you do for AOW are "adventure dives", which are 1-dive introductions to the specialty topics; after AOW, you can do the specialties for real, which as I understand it is 3-4 dives per topic, and presumably more classwork. (With your AOW dives typically counting towards the specialty.) You've also got the Rescue Diver cert, which seems to be quite highly regarded even by PADI's detractors.

I found AOW to be fun; actually working through stuff like S&R and nav is pretty interesting stuff (to me). The PPB course was cool, and gave us some ideas which we practiced a lot on subsequent dives; that helped a ton. We even filmed each other doing buoyancy drills, which helped enormously.

Like everything, I think the instructor makes a big difference. We had a good one.

Anyway, have fun!

 

[ben_wilson3301]

Strange that this thread is going on right now. I just signed up for AOW and after talking to my instructor my wife and I decided on Night, Peak Performance Buoyancy, and Nitrox, in addition to Deep and UW Nav. I wasn't aware that we wouldn't be certified in the individual specialties, and that the Nitrox would only be a partial cert. I did both of the knowledge reviews already, if we were to complete both and do the nitrox dive would that complete the Nitrox course or would we have to add in another specialty to keep Nitrox separate???

 

[Quero]

Ben, don't worry. The first chapter counts towards AOW. Then after you complete the knowledge development for the second chapter of the book, you'll have a little test to take, and then you're done and can be certified with the full specialty.

When I include Nitrox as part of AOW, I encourage people to do the second half as well so that they can gain a full Nitrox cert which allows divers to buy enriched air and dive with a buddy. As a matter of fact, I've never even awarded one of those half-certs for just one chapter., though I guess I would if for some reason the student couldn't do the test at all.