Fundies kicked my a$$

[TSandM]

Lee, I sent you a couple of references on the gas planning aspects.

At the Fundies level, there really isn't that much math. You should know the tank factor on your tank, and how much in volume and psi is required for rock bottom for the proposed depth of the dive. (I cheat, honestly; I remember 40 cf for 100 feet, and 20 for 60, and use one or the other. Trying to calculate precise rock bottom for an 85 foot dive is something I can do but don't want to. If 40 cf is too much, I take a bigger tank ). Then you subtract your RB from your total gas, and divide what's left into all available, halves or thirds, depending on the dive type. Only on a "thirds" dive (rare in open water diving) would you have to worry about dissimilar tank calculations, because the very conservative assumptions you have made in calculation rock bottom, as well as the fact that you did it in volume, not pressure, will cover almost all team compositions. The exception might be if you are diving with a very new diver with really extraordinarily high gas consumption.

You memorize your tables, and remember one's from half maximal depth.

I think maybe you are making your own life too difficult.

 

[Leejnd]

Thanks Lynne - I may very well be making things too hard for myself, but I need to better understand the shortcuts so I know what I'm over-complicating. That must be the part I didn't pick up well enough in class - the math shortcuts.

The issue with this upcoming dive is that it IS a dive in which we need to use the rule of thirds - it's on a wreck in the shipping lanes that is known for bad vis and strong currents, so we're probably going to run a line, and returning to the anchor line is an imperative. It's a team of three, each with different size tanks (HP100, HP130, and doubles), and I've been asked to do the math to figure out turn pressure for all three. I'm pulling my hair out - it's all a jumble to me. I'm having nightmares that I'm back in highschool and I suddenly find myself in a Calculus class, and the teacher is handing out the final exam and I realize I've skipped the class all semester and I don't know anything and I'm going to flunk!

I got your links and will read them today to try to understand all this. But to be honest, when it comes to math I do better when someone explains it to me. One of my team of three is calling me tonight, and I'm hoping he can help me comprehend all this.

One thing this has taught me is that this is as far as I'm going to go. I'm limited by the fact that I'm math-challenged. So I guess I'll be stopping here...unless a miracle occurs and the lightbulb goes on, and suddenly this all begins to make sense.:cool2:

 

[Leejnd]

Okay, an update: I just booked a few hours of remedial training on Wednesday with my Fundies instructor Steve. I'm actually very excited about this. He completely understands my "math fears" and, with some concentrated 1:1 time focusing on it, I'm sure I'll assimilate what I need to. This will also give me an opportunity to refresh my memory on the other aspects of DIR diving that I learned in class, but haven't had a chance to practice. I feel WAY better about Saturday, and am excited about going!

Just as an aside, my post was not intended to jump into the *controversy* started by Mossman in this thread (it was really just responding to Crush, to congratulate him on his achievement, and voice some of my own experiences and ambivalence). But I do want to add a couple comments about DIR in general:

I will likely not end up being a full-on DIR diver, primarily because most of my dives will be with my husband, who hasn't taken the class (although he dives a mostly DIR-compliant rig, and really likes the whole min-deco thing and that's how we end all of our dives now). I will try to get out and do as many dives as possible with other GUE/UTD-trained divers, such as this upcoming charter, but it won't be as often as I do non-DIR dives.

But what I wanted to say was...even if I don't end up embracing everything I learned from the class, one of the KEY things I got out of it is feeling that I am a SAFER DIVER. I feel significantly more prepared for dealing with an in-water emergency, should something go wrong. Now, could I have gotten that from a Rescue course (which I haven't yet taken)? Probably, to a point - but this class gave me that and way MORE, all in one class. And another difference is the focus on drills, and committing them to muscle memory. My understanding is that is NOT part of Rescue...like most other scuba classes, you learn what you learn in the class, and then that's it - if you want to practice it, fine, but regular practice is not something that is as intensely focused on and encouraged as it is in Fundies.

As I mentioned before, I will likely never go beyond this in my training. I don't really have a strong desire to go into overhead environments - I'm all about the critters, and I'm happy to see the ones that are NOT in caves or wrecks . And I just don't have the desire to increase my risk level. I used to be much more of a risk-taker when I was younger - hell I jumped out of planes in my 20s, but I wouldn't dream of doing it now - I can get thrills in less life-threatening ways. Diving overhead environments just doesn't hold enough pull on me to increase my life risk.

So, I am most certainly NOT a member of any "cult", and did not take Fundies to be part of a "club". I just wanted to be a better, safer and more skilled diver. I do like the idea that, if I happen to find myself on a boat needing an insta-buddy and another DIR diver happens to be there, I can feel confident about that insta-buddy (I've had a few bad insta-buddy experiences myself)...but that really didn't factor into my reasons for taking the class. Nor did moving on to tech diving - as you've all seen, I'm about as likely to do that as to become a Calculus professor. I took it because I liked the gear set-up (and I was in the market for new gear anyway), and I will say that I feel FAR more stable in the water column in a bp/w than I ever did in my old back-inflate BC (and my husband, who had a full-on jacket BC but switched to bp/w, says the same thing). I took it because I was doing lots of diving, but hadn't taken a class since my AOW & Nitrox back in 2006, and had to make a decision between either Rescue or Fundies...and Fundies just seemed like a better overall class for total dive improvement.

And finally, I took it because I heard SO many positive reviews of it, from divers that I know and respect, and thought it would be good for me. And I still feel that it will (once I get myself back into the swing of it!).

 

[TSandM]

LeeAnne, thanks for your comment!

One of the things I try very hard to convince people of is that DIR diving is NOT just for those who want to wear enough gear that they're totally unrecognizable, or disappear for hours under the earth. It's a system that works very nicely for single tank, recreational diving (which is about 80% of the diving I do to this day). Control, consistency, communication and caution are things that work for all diving -- and diving is way more fun when it is stress-free.

 

[Mossman]

LeeAnne, thanks for your comment!

One of the things I try very hard to convince people of is that DIR diving is NOT just for those who want to wear enough gear that they're totally unrecognizable, or disappear for hours under the earth. It's a system that works very nicely for single tank, recreational diving (which is about 80% of the diving I do to this day). Control, consistency, communication and caution are things that work for all diving -- and diving is way more fun when it is stress-free.

But it's never DIR diving unless it's really DIR. DIR is a holistic system involving an entire team approach, unified gear, etc. Please don't confuse "diving in a manner of DIR divers" to be at all DIR. It's not. All or nothing.

 

[ScubaFeenD]

But it's never DIR diving unless it's really DIR. DIR is a holistic system involving an entire team approach, unified gear, etc. Please don't confuse "diving in a manner of DIR divers" to be at all DIR. It's not. All or nothing.

Nevermind. My post was not nice, and this discussion is not worth entertaining.

Oh, and Congrats Crush.

 

[Leejnd]

But it's never DIR diving unless it's really DIR. DIR is a holistic system involving an entire team approach, unified gear, etc. Please don't confuse "diving in a manner of DIR divers" to be at all DIR. It's not. All or nothing.

I'm not really sure why you're saying this. This is NOT what I learned in my Fundies class - and I do have that advantage over you, that I actually took it. Remember, I had close to 200 dives before I even considered taking a GUE class, so I learned to dive the "old-fashioned" way and was not introduced into the DIR mindset right off the bat. So I think I have a pretty good basis for comparing the DIR concepts to what I already knew about diving, and evaluating their value and benefits for myself.

While you are correct that, for a particular dive to be considered a DIR dive, you would need be using the entire holistic system...the CLASS is not taught as "all or nothing". In fact we talked quite a bit about learning it all, and then deciding for ourselves what, if any, we want to keep and what we might want to discard in our own diving. As you go through the class you learn all the different elements that make up the DIR system, and how they all fit together into the whole - but there is no demand or pressure or imperative that you must use the system every time you dive. Yeah, you do if you're doing a DIR dive with another DIR diver, but who says every dive has to be a DIR dive? Nobody cares if you don't do the whole thing. We do learn the benefits of the whole, and if we're diving with like-trained divers, we're going to want to use it. But if we're not, we don't. Simple as that.

In my class we spoke at length about the fact that my usual dive buddy (my husband) has not taken the class, and probably won't...so we discussed which elements of the system that I would find of most value to tell him about and work into our dives. And that will differ for everyone - I know the kind of diver my husband is, and what will appeal to him and what won't. He definitely likes the bp/w rig, the signaling techniques, the pre-dive sequence and the min-gas technique (he thought it made way more sense than the classic 3-minute safety stop). But he wasn't too interested in all the gas management stuff...he does not like doing challenging dives, tends to get cold faster than I do (wimp! ), and he's WAY more of a hoover than I am, so we usually come nowhere near our NDLs and base our turnaround time on his gas supply. Nor is he interested in learning the propulsion techniques - he likes short, easy dives and feels very comfortable with his finning. No, that is not a DIR dive - but it incorporates some of the elements that I learned in this class.

Please don't mistake me for a DIR cheerleader. As I think I've made clear, I do not think this class is perfect...nor do I think the system is even necessary for every dive. Personally I thought that the materials left a lot to be desired, and you are reliant on having a REALLY GOOD instructor to be able to learn the more challenging material. I'm a writer of training materials and an educator myself, and I can think of many things I would do differently in those course materials. But that doesn't take away from the overall benefit of the class.

Honestly, pretty much all of the criticism I've seen directed at DIR-style diving is from people who never took the class. I do know divers who took the class and for various reasons chose not to ever do a full-on DIR dive again (or at least, very rarely). Even they had nothing but great things to say about the class. So I'm having trouble understanding your vehemence.

 

[fnfalman]

Isn't the DIR thing more of a GUE deal than a "unified" philosophy? Because I could have sworn there's an outfit that teaches Unified Team Diving...

 

[Leejnd]

Isn't the DIR thing more of a GUE deal than a "unified" philosophy? Because I could have sworn there's an outfit that teaches Unified Team Diving...

Well I tend to say GUE because I happened to take a GUE class - but my understanding is that UTD classes are also considered DIR, and teach essentially the same system. But I'm not the person to tell you of the differences (if there are any)...I'm sure some in here could. I know some divers who've taken classes from both agencies. I chose GUE specifically because the instructor I wanted happened to be a GUE instructor.

I know there are many that dislike the term DIR and want to discard it...but then what would we call that style of diving? GUE/UTD? I have no problem with calling it DIR. It's just a term to define a specific system and style of diving. I take no offense at the words "Doing It Right"...I don't feel like anybody's been saying I've been "Doing It Wrong" up to now. DIR diving is Doing It Right according to GUE/UTD training. Everything else is just Doing It Differently From Them!

 

[Mossman]

I'm not really sure why you're saying this. This is NOT what I learned in my Fundies class - and I do have that advantage over you, that I actually took it.

DIR is a holistic dive philosophy that claims that its practitioners are safer than non-DIR divers. Diving DIR is a dedicated venture and very few divers meet the specifications. Divers that approach DIR standards but don't follow through are merely applying Hogarthian tech configurations, usually where they aren't warranted. There's really very little application for DIR in recreational diving which is why I mock the concept. Tech diving is a different story. I do believe the DIR system is probably the safest for cave exploration, perhaps wrecks as well with certain caveats. For most open-water diving, however, DIR is major overkill.