Biggest thing killing dive shops?

[dmaziuk]

Parsing?
You mean, agreeing with? Understanding? Believing?

parse/pärs/
verb

1. analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles.

I said car maintenance is not significantly more expensive today (there was a period when new-fangled gizmos were size of a large fridge and only shops could afford them).

Kinda, but you have to have the know-how to actually work on your car as well.

Yes, and?

I dive with plenty of people who can tell me if their first stage is leaking, and some who could even tell where it's likely leaking from, but I don't know a ton of recreational divers who know their regulators well enough to actually fix them.

Ohkaayyy...

That, and factor in that something like ALLDATA costs a couple hundred bucks a month, and car maintenance is still super expensive, unless you really know what you're doing.

And if you don't know what you're doing, regulator maintenance is super-cheap? Or what?

 

[tursiops]

parse/pärs/
verb

1. analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles.

I said car maintenance is not significantly more expensive today (there was a period when new-fangled gizmos were size of a large fridge and only shops could afford them).



Yes, and?



Ohkaayyy...



And if you don't know what you're doing, regulator maintenance is super-cheap? Or what?

Thanks for trying to explain.

 

[TrimixToo]

Apples to Oranges. To service and maintain vehicles of today would require thousands upon thousands of dollars of equipment. Just not practical at all.

I do not agree. Many, many things can be done on cars with relatively basic tools that fall into the "service" and "maintenance" categories, as well as a fair fraction of repairs. As it happens, I rarely bring my cars anywhere for either one, though admittedly I do have several thousand dollars worth of tools accumulated over a long period of time.

I also service my own regulators. I bought or made the tools I need (having a machine shop in the basement is helpful in this regard to keep costs down!).

However, neither activity is for everyone. Both require a certain minimum level of understanding and a willingness to do the job right or bring it to someone who can, and for similar reasons.

 

[boulderjohn]

Hope this helps. I have no idea what they do now days, you know way more than I do.

Shortly after 1995, buddy breathing with one regulator was made optional, and it was subsequently dropped entirely. All but a few agencies have done the same thing. That is because of a realization that 1) with modern scuba equipment, there should never be a time when it would be necessary, 2) research by Glen Egstrom (Berkeley professor and former NAUI president) indicated it takes many, many successful practice attempts and then continued practice for a buddy team to be able to perform it satisfactorily in a real situation, and 3) research indicated too many cases when one person being out of air led to a double fatality. An OOA doing a proper CESA was considered to be a safer alternative.

Skin diving is still part of the confined water class. In the open water, dive #1 was a skin dive. It became optional after that, so you probably did not do it. There were really only 4 scuba dives then as it is now.

All other skills are included today. Here is a PARTIAL list of skills that have been added to the course since then.

1. Swim test--10 minute float
2. Students must assemble and disassemble equipment at least 5 times in the confined water sessions.
3. Full mask flood in addition to the partial mask flood
4. OOA using alternative air source
5. Disconnect low pressure inflator
6. Reconnect a loose cylinder band under water
7. Emergency weight drop on the surface
8. Respond by signalling to a request to know current cylinder pressure with reasonable accuracy without looking (because you had looked on your own recently).
9. Hover for 30 seconds using LP inflating mechanism one time and by oral inflation another time.
10. In the confined water portion of the course, plan and conduct a mini-dive with a buddy.
11. OOA swim using alternate air source, bot as the
12. During the mini-dive, respond to surprise situations (OOA, loose cylinder band, etc.) that were created by the instructor.
13. Oral inflation at the surface.
14. In open water dives, hover using oral inflation.
15. In OW, use alternate air source in OOA situation as both donor and receiver, with an ascent to the surface and oral inflation.
16. OW dive #4 is to be planned and executed by buddy teams with no input or assistance from the instructor unless necessary.

All I know is there would be no way to do all this in 3 days

Of course not. It couldn't be done in 3 days the, and it cannot be done in 3 days now. (Actually, in a private session it can--the confined water sessions go quickly with a private session.) As I said, my certification was done in 3 days back then by virtue of the fact that they skipped a healthy chunk of those standards.

My point was that at just about the time you were getting your thorough class, I was getting a shorter class than I have ever witnessed after that. It is a fallacy to assume your experience then was the same as everyone else's, just as it would be a fallacy to assume any class today represents all others. My niece is a NAUI certified diver. She accomplished that with one pool session that was 2 hours long and one OW dive to a maximum depth of 10 feet. that was about 12 years ago. Should I assume that all NAUI classes are of that ilk?

 

[TrimixToo]

That's true. Years ago there were TV repair shops. Now you just toss it and buy a bigger and better one for less than half the price.

TV repair has gone from relatively simple to fiercely complex. The labor cost to diagnose and repair many modern TV problems simply exceeds the price of a new TV. I have a few thousand bucks worth of DVMs, signal generators, oscilloscopes, and the like, and unless the problem is really simple (power supply boards, bad caps etc.) I'll bring my TVs for service under warranty or replace them when they break.

 

[TrimixToo]

K<snip>

That, and factor in that something like ALLDATA costs a couple hundred bucks a month, and car maintenance is still super expensive, unless you really know what you're doing.

You can get single-vehicle support for a lot less. ALLDATA et al charge 2-300/month for access to info for all the cars they support.

 

[TrimixToo]

If the tester doesn’t have a reset option then many times after the repair has been made most vehicles will reset after a certain number of cycles. A cycle is powering up the system then shutting it off. They can be from 12 to 36 cycles. This can also be manually achieved by turning the key on and off untill the computer has been satisfied that the problem no longer exists.

There's what, at a glance, seems to be a good explanation about driving cycles here: http://epa.ohio.gov/Portals/27/echeck/docs/OBDReadinessDriveCycles.pdf

 

[dmaziuk]

Thanks for trying to explain.

I'll be here all life.

I just think there should be Godwin's Law of car analogies: whenever someone makes one, everybody quickly starts making silly statements.

Andy's point was that Hog letting people service their own regs is one of the things killing dive shops. To which the reply was no, no more than people servicing their own cars are killing garages. "But fixing your own car is terribly expensive today." I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean: serious car repair is much more expensive in terms of skill, knowledge and tooling, than servicing a regulator. Today, yesterday, 30 years ago. Cost of basic maintenance is explained by Eric.

If I can replace blown caps in a TV and a head gasket on a car engine, anyone can do it. Yet I know plenty of people who can't and/or won't. So I think the "people don't fix their cars because it's expensive" is a silly statement, and I don't think people servicing their Hogs are a major concern for dive shops either.

And then I read "people don't fix their leaking regs because they don't know how, whereas fixing cars is super expensive unless you know how". Errr... what?

 

[Bob DBF]

If I can replace blown caps in a TV and a head gasket on a car engine, anyone can do it.

Na, there was as time when that could have been true, but with replace instead of repair and people no longer developing basic mechanical skills necessary to actually repair anything, fewer people each year develop those abilities.


Bob

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Shortly after 1995, buddy breathing with one regulator was made optional, and it was subsequently dropped entirely. All but a few agencies have done the same thing. That is because of a realization that 1) with modern scuba equipment, there should never be a time when it would be necessary, 2) research by Glen Egstrom (Berkeley professor and former NAUI president) indicated it takes many, many successful practice attempts and then continued practice for a buddy team to be able to perform it satisfactorily in a real situation, and 3) research indicated too many cases when one person being out of air led to a double fatality. An OOA doing a proper CESA was considered to be a safer alternative.

Skin diving is still part of the confined water class. In the open water, dive #1 was a skin dive. It became optional after that, so you probably did not do it. There were really only 4 scuba dives then as it is now.

All other skills are included today. Here is a PARTIAL list of skills that have been added to the course since then.

1. Swim test--10 minute float
2. Students must assemble and disassemble equipment at least 5 times in the confined water sessions.
3. Full mask flood in addition to the partial mask flood
4. OOA using alternative air source
5. Disconnect low pressure inflator
6. Reconnect a loose cylinder band under water
7. Emergency weight drop on the surface
8. Respond by signalling to a request to know current cylinder pressure with reasonable accuracy without looking (because you had looked on your own recently).
9. Hover for 30 seconds using LP inflating mechanism one time and by oral inflation another time.
10. In the confined water portion of the course, plan and conduct a mini-dive with a buddy.
11. OOA swim using alternate air source, bot as the
12. During the mini-dive, respond to surprise situations (OOA, loose cylinder band, etc.) that were created by the instructor.
13. Oral inflation at the surface.
14. In open water dives, hover using oral inflation.
15. In OW, use alternate air source in OOA situation as both donor and receiver, with an ascent to the surface and oral inflation.
16. OW dive #4 is to be planned and executed by buddy teams with no input or assistance from the instructor unless necessary.

Of course not. It couldn't be done in 3 days the, and it cannot be done in 3 days now. (Actually, in a private session it can--the confined water sessions go quickly with a private session.) As I said, my certification was done in 3 days back then by virtue of the fact that they skipped a healthy chunk of those standards.

My point was that at just about the time you were getting your thorough class, I was getting a shorter class than I have ever witnessed after that. It is a fallacy to assume your experience then was the same as everyone else's, just as it would be a fallacy to assume any class today represents all others. My niece is a NAUI certified diver. She accomplished that with one pool session that was 2 hours long and one OW dive to a maximum depth of 10 feet. that was about 12 years ago. Should I assume that all NAUI classes are of that ilk?

We did do a skin dive, and I think it was on the first dive during the ocean acclimation part - 20’ deep and grabbed some sand.
I forgot, we also did a ten minute tread water and a two minute hands out of the water by doing the egg beater kick.
The buddy breathing was in the course and was stated as a requirement in the book, but we were working from a 1995 version. I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be doing it because I was new to diving and had no way of knowing it was obsolete. I just did what I was told.

I’m sorry you got short changed on your OW

Another question, how can an agency make a claim that all their OW training is universal around the world when It is not. And if they make no claim then why is the title the same. Shouldn’t it be something like “Complete OW Course” and “Not So Complete OW course” so at least people know what they are buying?
Because if I was offered both I would have spent the extra money and got the upgraded version.
I guess the way it worked out I scored