AOW before Tech?

[saxman242]

Frankly, you are a total noobie and not ready for cave training. You need some addtional years of diving and hundreds of dives. Then, maybe. I suspect no serious cave instructor would take you on at this point. AOW will help you begin to learn task loading. Rescue will begin to get you to look outside yourself. Many many more dives will begin to internalize some good diving practices. Drysuit will keep you warm. Night, well, it's dark in a cave. Deep is because many caves are.

There certainly isn't anything wrong with someone at his experience level starting to develop a roadmap towards getting to that goal, however. That roadmap probably doesn't have him in a cave class next week, but it can outline the steps. Those probably include AOW, rescue, learning to dive a drysuit, etc

 

[Doby45]

You can take Advanced Cavern/Cave courses as soon as you want. That doesn't mean you will actually get certified or that you will find an instructor that will take you on. You should be very comfortable in water and in your gear prior to taking Cavern. Then, take Cavern and do a bunch of Cavern dives. If you did REALLY good in Cavern and were not a total poop show (gear wise) your instructor MIGHT allow you to go ahead and take Intro to Cave. Then you can do a bunch of Intro dives and then finally take Full Cave.

Poop show in Cavern to me personally is showing up for the class in 100% recreational gear. If you show up and you have a BPW and have your additional gear squared away, lights, reels and spools I would count you a step above a traditional "recreational" diver. Do you have your buoyancy under control and good propulsion control (frog kick) no "angel hands", if so I think you are pretty squared away. Your instructor will also see this and make an almost immediate "appraisal" of your ability.

 

[jtsfour]

You can take Advanced Cavern/Cave courses as soon as you want. That doesn't mean you will actually get certified or that you will find an instructor that will take you on. You should be very comfortable in water and in your gear prior to taking Cavern. Then, take Cavern and do a bunch of Cavern dives. If you did REALLY good in Cavern and were not a total poop show (gear wise) your instructor MIGHT allow you to go ahead and take Intro to Cave. Then you can do a bunch of Intro dives and then finally take Full Cave.

Poop show in Cavern to me personally is showing up for the class in 100% recreational gear. If you show up and you have a BPW and have your additional gear squared away, lights, reels and spools I would count you a step above a traditional "recreational" diver. Do you have your buoyancy under control and good propulsion control (frog kick) no "angel hands", if so I think you are pretty squared away. Your instructor will also see this and make an almost immediate "appraisal" of your ability.

I have been working on buoyancy and trim i am planning on getting some private classes with a good instructor to help me get squared away before going cavern/intro cave

 

[Compressor]

Hello! I am looking for input on some questions i have about training progression. I asked some similar questions a couple months ago but would like some last advice before i start to pull the trigger on starting training.

I have OW and EAN40
i have around 60 dives logged

As of now my goal is full cave.

I am about to start calling around to find a good instructor. I just had a quick conversation with someone and he basically said get AOW first. Are the skills learned in an AOW class that applicable to technical diving?

I am passionate about this and really don't want to waste precious training time learning something i do not need or that will be obsolete.

Do i need AOW before proceeding into tech?

If not AOW are there any specialties i need before continuing?

The person i talked to recommended taking a drysuit class and a night diving class.

Thanks for any input!

Maybe not our business but what are your goals when you say cave and tech diving? Are you trying to do decompression diving in a cave or in open water? Once you have a physical (cave) or physiological (decompression obligation) ceiling while diving, you are shifted your diving risk to a whole new level. Let us know and plenty of people will help out.

 

[NAUI Wowie]

Maybe not our business but what are your goals when you say cave and tech diving? Are you trying to do decompression diving in a cave or in open water? Once you have a physical (cave) or physiological (decompression obligation) ceiling while diving, you are shifted your diving risk to a whole new level. Let us know and plenty of people will help out.

I was under the assumption maybe mistakenly that most cave diving goes into deco thus I thought its extremely dangerous. Dangerous in my mind.... Can you do alot of shallow cave diving?

 

[tursiops]

You can take Advanced Cavern/Cave courses as soon as you want.

Even PADI Cavern requires AOW as a prereq.

 

[jtsfour]

Maybe not our business but what are your goals when you say cave and tech diving? Are you trying to do decompression diving in a cave or in open water? Once you have a physical (cave) or physiological (decompression obligation) ceiling while diving, you are shifted your diving risk to a whole new level. Let us know and plenty of people will help out.

My curent goal is full cave and deco and advanced nitrox emphasis on cave that is what i want most

My far out goal is advanced trimix in caves

 

[jtsfour]

Even PADI Cavern requires AOW as a prereq.

TDI doesnt require AOW
not sure about GUE their website is down

 

[The Chairman]

I've known 18 yo new divers that are ready to do cavern fresh out of OW. I've also seen 30 year old OW divers with hundreds of dives who lack the situational awareness of a cow. You've been given a skill set as an OW diver. It's up to you to decide if you've truly mastered them. Add new skills only as you have mastered the old. Trim and neutral buoyancy are important for any technical certs. Learning the frog kick is also important.

 

[Marie13]

TDI Cavern doesn't specifically require AOW, but it does require Deep specialty or proof of experience in order to dive deeper than 60ft in the course.

https://www.tdisdi.com/wp-content/u...idual/TDI Diver Standards_18_Cavern_Diver.pdf

I agree that a lot of diving, AOW, Rescue, and dry suit are good ideas.