What's the hardest class you have taken, and what made it hard?

[danvolker]

When we had that huge long thread the Hawaiian that likes to cause trouble started , about Bp/wings and wierdness or whatever.....Remember when he refused to believe there was an advantge to a wing over a jacket BC..... One thing that comes out very clear when you want to be 6 inches off the bottom and not moving forward or backward (just hanging, and not kicking alot --really almost not moving anything and being stuck in mid air.....as you want to be).....the wing cradles the tank, and creates a pontoon like effect on either side of the tank.... This is kind of nice with 30 pound wings on a single tank ( not so much the single lp 120), and really awesome with a double tank...On a double tank system (dual 80's) which lies lower to your back( lower center of gravity--think tractor versus sports car) and has much wider pontoons in the 40 or 50 pound wings--this is MASSIVELY more stable than any jacket...When you want to not move at all, and just hang...Could happen in a tight shipwreck or cave situation easily..not such a bad skill to have when looking for nudibranchs over a delicate coral reef with no rock or sand to put fingers on...the jacket bc will have the tank wanting to twist to the right side or the left side, for the tank to go from being on top, to being on bottom...the opposite will be the balanced double 80s with 40 pound halcyon wing....one wants to tip you, the other wants to keep you flat.


My lp 120, while faster if I am chasing Jewfish for video, or dolphins, is poor for stability in my 18 pound wing--I mean really poor, if I Want to NOT MOVE. It is better with a 30 pound wing, as the pontoon effect becomes functional ( really no pontoons with the 18), but the center of gravity for the large diameter and heavy tank makes it inherently unstable---I end up having to have "nervous feet" constantly kicking a little to hold my self stable....I never knew this before, even though I would get pretty still in shipwrecks shooting videos of jewfish that were coming up to me, this was still me moving slowly, or slight forward, slight backward--not really stopped...and certainly not effortless stopped.
So now I have a new tool, and I like it.

Bob "let me" figure this out for myself....in the videos, there was no way I could deny the issues.


When I heard in the past some people felt they did not get enough time....I have to question this.... Sandra rides 40 miles to 50 miles per day, 5 days per week on the bike, I do 25 to 30 miles 3 or 4 times per week, and can hold 25mph for an hour by myself. If they gave us any more pool time, even with our cardio and leg fitness, we would NOT have been able to handle it..as it was, I had some slight cramping at around 4.5 hours in pool at the end of day 2--which I have NEVER had before on a dive before no matter how fast or how hard we worked. I don't see how anyone could handle more time than you are given....Yes, there is a huge amount of material--an awful lot of skills to try for the first time, and to get down at an acceptable level.....It would be nice to have 2 or 3 weeks with Bob to realy perfect this, but we all know how impossible this would be from a class perspective. If you can't practice enough durring the original week, then you will practice over the next month--with a clear image of what you need to do...an epiphany really, and I would expect most with issues in the first week, could then hit it over the fence after they have had time to work on everything at their own pace...until they feel they are ready for Bob to look at them again...

Now if someone was to sign up for a Fundies class, and they do not have bouyancy skills already..meaning they frequently bump into the bottom, or go flying up out of the zone we are supposed to stay in--they will be hosed...this is not the class to attend untill they find someone to teach them good bouyancy....Mybe PADI Peak Control Bouyancy or the GUE Primer...something that shows what bouyancy is.....Fundies is too far beyond this---it requires a prerequisite good "skills set" for this. Most divers have a friendly neighborhood dive shop that can teach a PEAK CONTROL BOUYANCY class to them....Hopefully they will find an instructor that has good skills for this....once that is absorbed and practiced for a dozen to 2 dozen dives or more, then Fundies will be AMAZING!

 

[Thalassamania]

...the wing cradles the tank, and creates a pontoon like effect on either side of the tank...

Hm ... an equipment solution to skill problem, where have I heard that before?

No, really, you are quite correct. It is MUCH EASIER to maintain a horizontal position in the water with fine depth control when using a BP/w with the right size tank and wing (and perhaps a hair more ballast than is actually required).

 

[scubadada]

Divemaster because I went into it not knowing how to swim. By the time it was over I had developed a very crude but working method that got me passed

Sorry, I'd like my DM to be able to swim proficiently. Not my problem, I'm a strong swimmer, but others deserve possible rescue as required.

Best, Craig

 

[danvolker]

Hm ... an equipment solution to skill problem, where have I heard that before?

No, really, you are quite correct. It is MUCH EASIER to maintain a horizontal position in the water with fine depth control when using a BP/w with the right size tank and wing (and perhaps a hair more ballast than is actually required).

LOL Thal!

And my Lp 120 is REALLY an example of an some gear requiring an"equipment Solution"...Not so much for someone content to ONLY zoom along the reef at high speed, and never attempt a close quarters penetration, or an attempt at exploring a Structure with an inside you know nothing about....something where you may have to stop or backup, where you cant silt no matter what, and where right angle turns and chimney structures with vertical passages leave just enough room for a perfected diver to get through....


I see this Fundies direction as an Adventure Tool. It is for new experiences, new sights, and it is not for someone not willing to work hard and suffer through intense training. It is alot like if you want to race bicycles....if you want to race, and do well...You have to do some serious training. You have to really work, and you have to really want this.... I love adventure dives. I like getting into challenging situations where I might shoot a video of something no one has seen before....There are a thousand things I love to do in diving, and the tools Sandra and I are getting in fundies, will help me with the majority of them.
It is the hardest class I have ever done, and it is the most rewarding....
I have pretty much Talked Bob and Errol to do some "Demo" fundies class days in the next few months for people interested ...the whole thing about not knowing what you don't know....here you can see this first hand, see what you did not know you could not do--and why you might really like to be able to do it....They would do this at the Blue Heron Bridge so there is no boat cost, and the easily silted bottom is ideal for many of the skills demos.

Or divers could just ask Bob the tough questions.....see how this is NOT a "Koolaid thing"....I had very well known and long argued positions on many of the GUE issues...I asked Bob WHY NOT this way--my way, for so many things.....Sometimes he let me do it my way, put me through the skills issue and see how it went--if that is what he thought I needed to see the path...this worked on every instance. A few times he was able to just explain things at length, and that worked, but anyone knowing how bullheaded I can be, would know that these were time consuming, and fatigueing And after all of this, I am not drinking the Koolaid...I have experienced or seen first hand the whys, and have found the better ways to get what I want out of diving.

I would still encourage anyone who has the time the week starting Jan 28th, who was on the fence, to try this.....then after the class do some dives with us off of Palm Beach in places where the new skill set will blow you away!!!!

 

[Cave Diver]

So what was YOUR hardest class, and what made it that way?

CCR training.

We met most mornings around 7 to assemble gear which meant getting up and having breakfast before that. We spent some time going over lessons and then driving to the site of the day, checking gear, gearing up, reviewing plans and then actually doing the dives. Most days we did at least two dives, with times running anywhere from 2-4 hours, depending on depth and skills we were working on. The days ended at the shop around 7-8 pm, with us having to break down gear, clean and disinfect it, set it out to dry for the next day, then go get something to eat, review things from that day, and prepare for the next day. Most days we didn't get to bed til 11 or 12, and the alarm was going off around 5:30 for us to get up and start the process all over again. By the end of the 6th or 7th day, we were physically worn out.

In addition to that, complex task loading, new challenges, situational awareness problems and the charlie foxtrot of managing a third buoyancy device had us yo-yoing up and down for the first several dives like new brand new divers on their first pool dive. The part that really sucked about that was that both my buddy and I were accomplished divers and we *knew* we sucked, as opposed to the blissful ignorance we enjoyed just experiencing weightlessness for the first times. That added mental strain onto the physical strain and made for a long, long week of training.

At one point on the second or third day, my buddy and I both independently thought "Screw it, it's not too late to bail on this class, sell these damn things and get most of our money back out of." But we persevered and in the end it was worth it.

Prior to that, my cave class was the hardest.

 

[TSandM]

Cave Diver, that's interesting, especially in view of what Dan just wrote. I think it's a very reasonable question, whether it is good for a class to be hard because the days are too long and exhausting, or whether that shows poor class design. (This criticism has been leveled at Fundies before.)

 

[Thalassamania]

Cave Diver, that's interesting, especially in view of what Dan just wrote. I think it's a very reasonable question, whether it is good for a class to be hard because the days are too long and exhausting, or whether that shows poor class design. (This criticism has been leveled at Fundies before.)

Permit me to try and shine some light on that question. I've taught in basically three formats: semester, four weeks and two weeks. I don't see a lot of difference in the physical skills of the students, if I had to hip shot an answer, I'd say that four week students were the best at mastering physical skills. As far as the book learning that had to be fit in, again, I'd say that the four week students were the best but the semester students were very, very close. The two week students were the worst, overall, at both skills and book learning ... I think that they were just too tired. On a few occasions we actually cancelled a day's work to rest up, because things had deteriorated.

Is it a question of class design? I don't think so. Designing a semester class is easy, the more you shorten it, if you do not reduce the content (or even if you do reduce it slightly), the more critical it is to have a good, well though out, design. Knowing this I'd spend much more time getting ready for a two week program, lectures all written, cue cards all made up, training aids all in their place on the shelf, dive gear perfect, training gear for pool and open water all checked out and packed up in labeled bins, etc. But no amount of "better design" or prior prep could trump the human factor which invariably made things go just slightly awry and required reevaluation, readjustment, and re-planning. That's damn hard to do when you're already running on eight cylinders with the throttle wide open just to complete the day at hand. Is my two week format too optimistic? Can the same be said for Fundies? Perhaps. You see, it's not just the students' it's also the staff ... we're only human too.

 

[danvolker]

Cave Diver, that's interesting, especially in view of what Dan just wrote. I think it's a very reasonable question, whether it is good for a class to be hard because the days are too long and exhausting, or whether that shows poor class design. (This criticism has been leveled at Fundies before.)

Well, if Sandra andI had read all the course material BEFORE the class like we were supposed to, the lectures would have taken much less time...If I had my gear squared away better, and we did not have to spend so much time fixing how the harness was adjusted, how high the d-rings were, which fins I wanted to use...and If Sandra and I had ever done "any" practice clipping the primary off underwater....we could have had several more hours per day for relaxing....as it was, our lack of preparation meant long days and less sleep than we would have liked.....it really was preventable for "us"...and my "lengthy discussions about the WHY's" of some things definitely added up...but it was really worth the time and tiredness, for the answers and understanding I got from it.


Diving for us has been so easy, for so long, that we just did not take the prep part seriously.
This includes the sloppiness of not clipping off regs, or not having perfect harness adjustments, because most diving is so easy, that we never saw the need...but when you experience how big the differences can really be...the old ways just have to go

 

[Thalassamania]

Diving words to live by: P⁷

(Proper Planing and Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance)
'Cause there's no such thing as, "just a simple dive"
​

 

[Cave Diver]

Cave Diver, that's interesting, especially in view of what Dan just wrote. I think it's a very reasonable question, whether it is good for a class to be hard because the days are too long and exhausting, or whether that shows poor class design. (This criticism has been leveled at Fundies before.)

In our case, it would be hard to have done it much differently. The instructor we chose was kind of isolated, meaning we had a bit of a drive from hotel and food to his place. Since we were both full cave already, we did our training in various cave systems in the area, but we had to meet certain standards for depth and times, so we visited several different systems anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours from the shop. Also, as skills progressed and called for longer dives with more complex planning, we were limited in choices (or face being bored silly sitting in a hole).

Could another day or two shortened our days or allowed for a break in between? Probably. But we were already scheduled for 8 days, which was pushing the limits of vacation time, and cost for food and lodging (not to mention the cost of our units, incidentals, class fee, etc).

It was hard, but doable, and we knew it would be challenging going into it. We could also have shortcut a few evenings by not doing full tear down and disinfection of our units, as it wasn't really necessary. However, we opted to do that under the advice of the instructor, to ingrain the procedure to us while under his watch, to correct any problems we might encounter.