jhoey
Registered
I just did the DIR-F course last week with Dan Mackay (excellent instructor, by the way), and my experience is that you'd be well-served to concentrate on just two things:
1/Buoyancy.
2/Trim.
Get your weighting just right. Descend from the surface in 10' increments, taking 1min stops at 10', 20', 30', etc. Do the same on your ascents. When you take your stops, make sure you can hover motionless without varying your depth by more than a couple of feet. And try doing all this while maintaining dead level trim. Arch your back, keep your knees up, your hands in front of you and your head looking horizontally. Have your dive buddy watch your trim, too: it's common to think that you're more horizontal than you really are.
That's the foundation on which everything else rests; if you can get your buoyancy and trim nailed to the point where they are second nature and you don't need to think about them, then you will breeze through DIR-F. Where things get... ah, interesting is when the instructor starts task-loading you: if you do, say, an out of air emergency drill and your buoyancy and/or trim suddenly go out of whack, then you know you haven't made buoyancy and trim second nature. It's always a humbling moment when that happens...
The rest of it? By all means get your rig sorted out and get familiar with it beforehand. But don't worry too much about learning finning techniques, shooting lift bags, etc. beforehand -- you'll get up to speed on those during the course. At the end of the day it's all about buoyancy and trim.
Oh, and don't get too hung up on the pass/fail thing. That is merely incidental; you'll learn a lot about where you are at as a diver, along with the basic toolset for improving. That's the true value of the course.
And remember to have fun -- I had a blast!
1/Buoyancy.
2/Trim.
Get your weighting just right. Descend from the surface in 10' increments, taking 1min stops at 10', 20', 30', etc. Do the same on your ascents. When you take your stops, make sure you can hover motionless without varying your depth by more than a couple of feet. And try doing all this while maintaining dead level trim. Arch your back, keep your knees up, your hands in front of you and your head looking horizontally. Have your dive buddy watch your trim, too: it's common to think that you're more horizontal than you really are.
That's the foundation on which everything else rests; if you can get your buoyancy and trim nailed to the point where they are second nature and you don't need to think about them, then you will breeze through DIR-F. Where things get... ah, interesting is when the instructor starts task-loading you: if you do, say, an out of air emergency drill and your buoyancy and/or trim suddenly go out of whack, then you know you haven't made buoyancy and trim second nature. It's always a humbling moment when that happens...
The rest of it? By all means get your rig sorted out and get familiar with it beforehand. But don't worry too much about learning finning techniques, shooting lift bags, etc. beforehand -- you'll get up to speed on those during the course. At the end of the day it's all about buoyancy and trim.
Oh, and don't get too hung up on the pass/fail thing. That is merely incidental; you'll learn a lot about where you are at as a diver, along with the basic toolset for improving. That's the true value of the course.
And remember to have fun -- I had a blast!
