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i think that's excessive. by the time you get 25 dives under your belt, the benefits of AOW are considerably lower. i'd say start thinking about it after about 8-10 (including your course dives) ob. on-topic: i'm thinking that a DM course including professional-level resuscitation &...

IIRC the AOW is a pre-requisite for most if not all of the PADI specialities, anyway. do your AOW & use it as an opportunity to grill your instructor about all the things you've wondered about with your diving. getting the AOW card will help you avoid hassles with many dive operators who want...

i think the real lesson here is to understand what equipment your buddy is using before starting the dive; presumably there will also be some discussion of times, depths & air pressures during the pre-dive plan, where it will become very apparent who is talking in metric & who in imperial. i'm...

your reaction was pretty common, many people (& especially women it seems) really don't like the experience of getting their face wet when they flood their masks. the added stress of your partner's hopes & expectations wouldn't have helped either. as you've discovered, you can get more used to...

it's partly because of the great diving in queensland that the legislation there ties up dive operators so painfully: bear in mind that for every gue-trained or highly-experienced diver that takes to the water at the GBR, there's at least a thousand people who've never dived before, live...

thanks for the idea, but the trim weights are non-dumpable, so aren't really what i'm after

thanks folks - sort of what i was fearing :/ happily i don't quite have the circumference to have room for both pocket and weight pouch. i'd seen the shorts before & didn't like the comfort idea of wearing those with a 2-piece wetsuit: too much neoprene around the groinal region is a bit...

hi folks, i have a new halcyon MC system & am trying to work out whether it's feasible to use both the zippered gear pocket (i have no other storage) as well as the acb12 weight system. has anyone made this work? at the best, it seems the balance is a bit out of whack between the left &...

troll!

i was chatting with an instructor friend about this yesterday; i came to the conclusion that when some (many? most?) people take the OW class, they switch into a "herd" mode, and assume that the instructor (& to a lessor extend DM) will keep everything safe for them. they therefore don't have...

i can't help you myself, but maybe if you say *where* you took the pic (location, depth, in-shore or midwater reef, etc) that might help others...

i'd second this. an alternative if you're on the north side is shelly beach and/or fairy bower at Manly. ps fishdiver: nice pic ;)

OW classes in sydney tend to be shore dives in relatively protected areas and 8-10m of ~20deg C water. the various instructors i assist all have slightly different approaches to gas management, but the basic common theme during the check-out dives is "turn on 100bar". student tanks are...

is this for the "national geographic" PADI certification? afaik that's equivalent to doing open water and advanced open water. $700 seems a lot - typical OW courses in sydney are ~AU$350 (~US$320), all included; but then again, we have plenty of nearby shore diving & no need for exposure...

i concur - if you're needing to get air from your BC then things have gotten *way* out of hand.

fair enough. without understanding the conditions you want to dive in i can't advise as well as i might, but i'm still thinking given your general size (since it's quite close to me own) that such a massive tank may be overkill & cause some difficulty, especially on exit.

sorry - i should have been more precise - double steels are going to make you very much more negatively buoyant. i'm not a twins diver, so i haven't worked through it myself yet, but the impression i get is that with twins you tend to have more air at the end of your dives, offsetting the...

at the risk of starting a religious war you might want to consider aluminium if you're going to doubles, just since it gets so heavy

yikes - that's a *massive* tank, esp at that pressure! what on earth is your consumption rate & how long do you plan to dive at what depth? the weight of the tank itself would be enormous & heavy (about 22kg?) fwiw faber claim to do a 22L (@232bar) tank : Faber Industrie , but it weighs...

i don't think there's any law that says you must have weight belt *or* integrated. i dive with both: 6lb on the bc and 6-9lb on the belt: i believe it provides a degree of flexibility, redundancy & comfort. YMMV - i've been smacked for this opinion before :P i also dive with a buddy -...