advanced open water with padi or naui

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Over the years, I've heard it called Free Ascent, Emergency Ascent, Swimming Emergency Ascent, and it's never to be spoken of again cousin, Buoyant Ascent.

In an article I read several years ago the author wrote long ago it was referred to as “blow and go”; the diver spit out the reg, blew bubbles, and kicked to the surface while looking up the entire way. i want to say the article was in Dive Training written by Alex Brylske, or maybe it was his book, The Complete Diver.
 
In an article I read several years ago the author wrote long ago it was referred to as “blow and go”; the diver spit out the reg, blew bubbles, and kicked to the surface while looking up the entire way. i want to say the article was in Dive Training written by Alex Brylske, or maybe it was his book, The Complete Diver.

Blow and go is the term by submariners for the buoyant ascent training. A lot of terminology came from the Navy, exhaling (blow) empties your lungs for the expanding gas, and go for the surface. Looking up keeps your airway open, with the ability to try to avoid anything on the surface. It was fun.

I assume, since controlling the BC is not mentioned, it will be expanding on the way up and a buoyant ascent. If it was before the BC, he would mention dropping the weight belt, and/or fireing the CO2 cartredge(s) on the Mae West or life vest, as without that it would be was closer to a normal ascent (60 fpm) and wouldn't need such drastic measures to avoid embolism.

The buoyant ascent as the last emergency procedure on the list 'cause it's better than dead on bottom. The downside is that one could be injured, bent, or dead on the surface, it's an option that was covered in OW training, I would guess not now.
 
Price and geography is my standard gauge

Cheapest price, with the nicest geography

and if they're throwing in accommodation

Well!


I cringe when I see posts like this and I'm not knocking you at all - there are many folks that feel this way.

I've seen more than a few AOW classes from different businesses - some really stand out, some really just cover the basics.

You're paying for an instructors time (and the dives) - as long as there is value with knowledged gained, the cheapest price isn't always the best but the instructor has to be putting forth the extra effort covering all aspects of recreational diving.



Come on man, Advanced Open Water man

You've done your OW and off you go to do diving and between divings you devour your OW book and
learn all and then some more diving and then you come on here SB to see what's next and see some vids
to improve yourself as you go diving and practice what you've found and seen other divers do and bought the AOW book on ebay for fifteen bucks, as you are now a diver responsible for your self and you want to learn so that by the time you get to AOW you will have the skills and knowledge to pass proficiently your two days of course during which it would be nice to do some scenery away from your usual haunts with wining and dining like a holiday at a fantastic price




as its only AOW and PADI NAUI are both accreditors with qualified instructors
where in order to be successfully instructed you must present as instructable

No matter the instructor

Price and geography is my standard gauge

Cheapest price, with the nicest geography

and if they're throwing in accommodation

Well!
 
About the SSI fatality.
Not sure if this is an addition from after the fatality, but today the standards state:

EXAMPLE: Skills like ditching and recovering the scuba unit, breathing directly from the cylinder valve, and any ascents without the regulator in the mouth and/or the breathing gas turned off are not endorsed by SSI, and must NOT be taught during SSI training programs.

Maybe agencies should add to their standards "don't be a dumba$$", but that's probably too vague, so breathing from a cylinder, don/doff, doing emergency ascents with the valve closed, etc..
.
We were taught how to breathe directly off a cylinder in our AOW class (some years ago now), in shallow calm water but the instructor stressed it was not part of the course.
An ex-submariner, he thought it was good for more experienced divers to know about 'just in case'!
I was astonished to find it was quite effective... made me more confident that in an extreme reg failure event it was at least possible to get air directly from the cylinder and make a safe ascent.
 
We were taught how to breathe directly off a cylinder in our AOW class (some years ago now), in shallow calm water but the instructor stressed it was not part of the course.
An ex-submariner, he thought it was good for more experienced divers to know about 'just in case'!
I was astonished to find it was quite effective... made me more confident that in an extreme reg failure event it was at least possible to get air directly from the cylinder and make a safe ascent.
In what scenarios would you breath straight off a cylinder?

First stage fail shut? I'd rather swim towards the surface than try to get my single cylinder off my back. For a twinset or sidemount I have two cylinders so never needed.
 
I've witnessed two first stage HP seats fail open at depth, and experienced one... easily handled by the competent buddy in each case. Cylinder with failed reg was turned off, but still had air reserves.
The scenario our 'old school' instructor envisaged was extreme.. assumed no buddy nearby for whatever reason.
So his drill was to close valve, remove the failed reg, place cylinder under the left arm, make a cupped fist with the left hand over the valve post and feather the valve with the right hand for each breath. It works!
Mind you this was back in the days of J valves, horsecollar BC's and minimal plastic backpacks... bit trickier with a BP&W :wink:
 
We were taught how to breathe directly off a cylinder

I was taught that too, in my OW class. I don't see the point in learning this skill. Seems like a good way to blow yourself up and embolize.

The US Navy BDO school did not even teach us this skill in 1983.
 
I've witnessed two first stage HP seats fail open at depth, and experienced one... easily handled by the competent buddy in each case. Cylinder with failed reg was turned off, but still had air reserves.
The scenario our 'old school' instructor envisaged was extreme.. assumed no buddy nearby for whatever reason.
So his drill was to close valve, remove the failed reg, place cylinder under the left arm, make a cupped fist with the left hand over the valve post and feather the valve with the right hand for each breath. It works!
Mind you this was back in the days of J valves, horsecollar BC's and minimal plastic backpacks... bit trickier with a BP&W :wink:
Did you practice removing a reg from a cylinder underwater? I'm just trying to work through how anyone is expected to breath off a cylinder underwater. And if removing a reg underwater was ever taught/practiced/tested in open water that is 50 F / 10 C.
 
Did you practice removing a reg from a cylinder underwater? I'm just trying to work through how anyone is expected to breath off a cylinder underwater. And if removing a reg underwater was ever taught/practiced/tested in open water that is 50 F / 10 C.
We breathed off a cylinder (with no reg on the valve) in a swimming pool as a "confidence-building exercise." One such cylinder was put in each corner of the pool, and we swam underwater from one corner to the next, breathing only from the cylinders. (Cupping our hands to catch the air so we could sip air from the air bubble.)

It was an exercise with zero practical value, so there is no reason to try and work out how you'd do ti for "real.". It was just one of the ways to fill up the many hours of pool time we went through.
Strip out the nonsense like that, and make the teaching more efficient, and of course the pool sessions can be shorter than they used to be. Shorter does not equate to worse, just as longer does not equate to better.
 
Strip out the nonsense like that, and make the teaching more efficient, and of course the pool sessions can be shorter than they used to be. Shorter does not equate to worse, just as longer does not equate to better.
Years ago a teacher in my department came into the office and flopped down in her chair with a look of amazement on her face. She said she had just effectively taught her students something in one class period that usually took her two weeks. She had used a very different approach, and the results were stunning. I have a number of stories like that from my own teaching, including getting students to learn something in no time that I could not successfully teach them in two weeks. There are many education books that go over the results of research, showing how certain specific instructional techniques are so very much more effective than others. Sadly, at least at the high school level where I worked trying to teach those techniques, they are among the least used techniques by teachers, who claim that by sticking to the old ways of teaching, they are maintaining high standards.

I ran into a corollary when I was selected to be on a team hired by Riverside Publishing to make changes to the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, then one of the most popular standardized tests in the nation. Since none of the teachers on the team had never seen this test that so many students throughout the nation (thankfully not mine) were required to take, it was a real revelation. In one HUGE section of the verbal exam for high school seniors, the students were required to identify by the name the parts of the old, standard style of the business letter, the one pretty much not used anymore by anyone. Students were required to define proper spacing, indenting, etc. It was a major part of their final score.

Everyone in our group was astonished. We don't teach that anymore! It's not in the state content standards! Why are you testing it?

The representative from Riverside was defiant. That has been part of the exam since 1948, he said. You guys can lower your standards, he said, but we won't lower ours.
 
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