AOW & Nitrox in one shot....

[tribaltim]

Hello Everyone,

I've been an Open Water diver now for about 9 months and I have 43 dives. I just signed up for AOW and Nirox. I will be doing the classroom time on Tuesday and then Friday the night dive and Saturday and Sunday the other dives. Any pointers or advice stuff you wish you would have done any thing like that....Also don't I get to pick a couple of specialty dives or something in the future I plan on being a Dive Instructor are their Specialty dives that I should just do now with this class that will get me on the right track? Thanks in advance for all your help.

Tim

 

[TSandM]

You don't say which agency's AOW you are doing. If it's PADI, you have two required dives, and three electives. I would highly recommend choosing elective dives that have some substance to them -- in other words, not boat diving or photographer (unless you have a particular interest in photography and the instructor is an avid photographer who will actually teach you something). The buoyancy dive can be worthwhile, and I wish I had done search and rescue. Navigation is worth while, as well.

Ask questions and try to get the most out of the dives. The deep dive, for example, is a great place to get into gas planning. Buoyancy is a place to talk about weight distribution and correcting trim.

A lot (always) depends on the instructor, and how much meat he wants to put into such a course, but AOW can be a real learning experience in the right hands.

 

[Diver0001]

Hello Everyone,

I've been an Open Water diver now for about 9 months and I have 43 dives. I just signed up for AOW and Nirox. I will be doing the classroom time on Tuesday and then Friday the night dive and Saturday and Sunday the other dives. Any pointers or advice stuff you wish you would have done any thing like that....Also don't I get to pick a couple of specialty dives or something in the future I plan on being a Dive Instructor are their Specialty dives that I should just do now with this class that will get me on the right track? Thanks in advance for all your help.

Tim

I'll assume you mean PADI.

You're required to take the deep dive and the navigation dive. You also have three electives. It sounds like you've already chosen Nitrox as one of the electives. That leaves you with two more.

One thing to consider with respect to the Nitrox dive is that you won't get a Nitrox card as a result of AOW. If you want to be able to get nitrox fills after the course you'll need to take the whole specialty to get the card. I assume your instructor told you this already but to upgrade to the nitrox specialty you'll need to read a different book than the AOW one, write a test and make one more dive. Personally for the small amount of additional effort I would suggest going all the way with this specialty.

In terms of the other electives, I personally think drift and night are the most valuable.

R..

 

[tribaltim]

I'll assume you mean PADI.

You're required to take the deep dive and the navigation dive. You also have three electives. It sounds like you've already chosen Nitrox as one of the electives. That leaves you with two more.

One thing to consider with respect to the Nitrox dive is that you won't get a Nitrox card as a result of AOW. If you want to be able to get nitrox fills after the course you'll need to take the whole specialty to get the card. I assume your instructor told you this already but to upgrade to the nitrox specialty you'll need to read a different book than the AOW one, write a test and make one more dive. Personally for the small amount of additional effort I would suggest going all the way with this specialty.

In terms of the other electives, I personally think drift and night are the most valuable.

R..

Yes I'm a PADI Diver, but what do you mean when you say I can have nitrox as an elective because I bought the Nitrox package and the AOW package so do I still get three other electives? I have a boat it's a 14' Achilles but I don't need someone to tell me how to dive off it I already do that on my own. hahahah

 

[DelightedDiver]

We did a Nitrox add on and a peak performancy buoyancy add on when we did our AOW. It's a few extra dives and a little more money, but you end up with two speciality cards you can use as you work toward becoming a DI.

 

[HowardE]

Deep, and Nav are required.

I did drift, which was kind of a waste, since I drift dive all the time.

I wish I had done the search and recovery with a lift bag and all of that. That would have been cool.

As far as hoping to some day be an instructor. Just dive - a lot... and you'll be a good diver. While these certs are required along the way to ultimately be an instructor someday, you'll find that the most valuable experiences are not from a book, but rather from experience... so dive, and then dive some more, and then dive some more... (at least that's my experience)

 

[Diver0001]

Ok, at the risk of confusing you even more, here's the deal:

AOW has a number of elective dives. One of them is Nitrox. If you take nitrox as an elective dive during AOW you won't get a nitrox card because you havn't done the whole specialty. The elective dive only involves doing about 1/2 of what you need for the whole specicalty.

There is also a nitrox specialty. It involves a little more in depth theory and a test and 2 dives instead of one. Any way you do it, if you want the nitrox card you need to read the nitrox book, watch the video, take the test and do 2 dives.

However, these things *can* be combined into an AOW course as long as they make sure you read the book, take the test, watch the video and make both nitrox dives.

So for example, you could dive nitrox on your deep dive, which would count for both a nitrox dive and a deep dive. Same goes for navigation, drift, boat and a raft of others. IIRC there are some restrictions on what can be combined so I'm not sure if they can combine it will all of the dives but they can combine it with most of them. Your instructor will know which dives can be combined and which can't.

The main thing is that in order to get the card you need to read the book, take the test, watch the video and make 2, not 1 nitrox dives.

So, a possible combination of this could be as follows:
- deep
- nav + nitrox
- elective-1 + nitrox
- elective-2
- elective-3
That would include 5 dives and you would have 3 electives and your nitrox dives would be combined with other dives.

Another alternative that the instructor has would be as follows:
- deep
- nav
- nitrox 1
- nitrox 2
- elective 1
- elective 2
That's 6 dives instead of 5 and the nitrox dives are not combined with other elements.

Utterly confused yet?

R..

 

[Damselfish]

Hello Everyone,

I've been an Open Water diver now for about 9 months and I have 43 dives. I just signed up for AOW and Nirox. I will be doing the classroom time on Tuesday and then Friday the night dive and Saturday and Sunday the other dives. Any pointers or advice stuff you wish you would have done any thing like that....Also don't I get to pick a couple of specialty dives or something in the future I plan on being a Dive Instructor are their Specialty dives that I should just do now with this class that will get me on the right track? Thanks in advance for all your help.

Tim

Agree with picking picking meaty specialties like night, search, bouyancy, Nitrox - whatever ones you will actually learn from at this point - and not lame ones like boat. (Read about boat diving for tips if you haven't ever boat dived, but you won't learn anything from including a boat specialty dive in AOW that you can't learn easily yourself.) In theory you can pick 3 specialties but some shops don't give a choice, simply because they don't offer all the specialties or it's a type of dive that can't be done in that location. (Or maybe they think that some of the specialties are inappropriate for AOW and are making an effort to teach the useful ones...) These details are something you should talk to the shop about.

Nitrox can either be an elective (one dive) or you can do the actual Nitrox certification combined with AOW, possibly saving a little time or money. I don't see much point in just doing the one dive as an elective but getting the Nitrox cert makes sense and you will learn from it. When you say "signed up for AOW and Nitrox" it sounds like you are doing the 2nd but can't tell for sure.

With regards to becoming an instructor, your choice of specialty dives now is not important except for choosing things you will learn from and help you become a better diver. It's not like you are going to become an expert capable of teaching a specialty from one dive.

 

[hopeitsapar]

Yes I'm a PADI Diver, but what do you mean when you say I can have nitrox as an elective because I bought the Nitrox package and the AOW package so do I still get three other electives? I have a boat it's a 14' Achilles but I don't need someone to tell me how to dive off it I already do that on my own. hahahah

If you bought the Nitrox and the AOW then the Nitrox will count as one of the electives for the AOW.

I did the same thing, but due to weather, did the Dry Suit as well as Nitrox and both count toward your electives.