DIRF, A Sobering Experience

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Less than a thousand, ScubaDan! Gonna come? Class starts at 2pm on Friday, so you could take off Thursday afternoon, spend the night on the road somewhere and complete the drive in on Friday. Class ends early Sunday afternoon.

Roak
 
tombiowami once bubbled...
I have only been diving a year, but have enought experience to answer your question about what is lacking in the basic OW classes by the current orgs.

A basic failure to force students to learn and execute skills hovering in good/perfect buoyancy/trim.

I learned the skills on my knees, on a platform.

The focus of the DIR Fund class is really just getting people to learn how to hover with little motion.

Tommy
How about this?

Because a DIRF course may be a good thing for most any diver, doesn't mean that the programs provided by all other training agencies are a bad thing for all divers.

Simply put, existing agency training ain't broke for all divers. No, i repeat NO divers come out of our OW class without a very good grasp of buoyancy skills. They don't get their c-card without those minimum buoyancy skills. Same goes for other skills that are SUPPOSE to be taught and displayed by the student to show proficency in that skill.

For the most part it is not the agencies, who set the standards, who drop the ball. It's the individual instructor who doesn't demand that the student meet the skill level intented or the student who a year later has never practiced the skills they learned to become more proficent and off they head to Coz.

I've said this before and i agree with psionicdfw, OW divers should be droppin like flies if OW training is as screwed up as some of you say. I'm in full agreement that DIRF is great ADVANCED training for any diver to take if they so desire but do not believe it is needed to be safe diver in many senarios. No statistical model of anything is absolute yet we have to hang our hats on something. How many stop signs do you think are run each year without incident or report? For what they are, statistics don't lie. Diving accident occurence of 0.00004 or less is really pretty amazing considering all the things that can go wrong in all possible senarios.

Do i take this to mean everything is perfect with existing agencies training programs? Certainly not! No program is perfect and can always be improved through experience and innovation. One thing i would change would be to make c-cards expire and require re-training or basic skills evaluation every two years or so to keep the plastic good for air.

I liked LY's starting post for this thread but took it for what it is and what i think he ment it to be. His opinion and what he has worked out for himself. From what i've read & heard about DIRF, it is a good thing to consider but IMO it is not the holy grail of diving. Again, agreeing with psionicdfw here, decide for yourself what is right for you. GUE is not your only choice if your serious about being a safe diver.
 
gedunk once bubbled...

How about this?

Because a DIRF course may be a good thing for most any diver, doesn't mean that the programs provided by all other training agencies are a bad thing for all divers.

I've said this before and i agree with psionicdfw, OW divers should be droppin like flies if OW training is as screwed up as some of you say. I'm in full agreement that DIRF is great ADVANCED training for any diver to take if they so desire but do not believe it is needed to be safe diver in many senarios. No statistical model of anything is absolute yet we have to hang our hats on something. How many stop signs do you think are run each year without incident or report? For what they are, statistics don't lie. Diving accident occurence of 0.00004 or less is really pretty amazing considering all the things that can go wrong in all possible senarios.

Do i take this to mean everything is perfect with existing agencies training programs? Certainly not! No program is perfect and can always be improved through experience and innovation. One thing i would change would be to make c-cards expire and require re-training or basic skills evaluation every two years or so to keep the plastic good for air.

I liked LY's starting post for this thread but took it for what it is and what i think he ment it to be. His opinion and what he has worked out for himself. From what i've read & heard about DIRF, it is a good thing to consider but IMO it is not the holy grail of diving. Again, agreeing with psionicdfw here, decide for yourself what is right for you. GUE is not your only choice if your serious about being a safe diver.

one, nobody said that other agency's classes are a 'bad' thing but they are seriously lacking.

DIRF is not advanced training, these are the basic skills taught that should be taught in any agency's OW class. Just MHO.

The statement: 'Diving accident occurence of 0.00004 or less ' by itself is meaningless.

Luckily the vast majority of OW divers that get certified never dive again after their class for a variety of reasons.

GUE as of yet is the only agency to my knowledge that does have expiring c-cards and you need to do so many dives in the particular environment you were trained in to keep the card current, it is amazing that this isnt done by other agency's.

i do see a general attitude problem in the statement: 'everybody should decide for THEMSELVES what works for THEM. WHat about your divebuddy? You are a buddy TEAM, in a team you should consider what works for the TEAM, not just you.

a beautiful example of this are these moldable gagomatic mouthpieces, great for the diver that uses them, not so great for a OOA dive buddy who now has to choke on a mouthpiece too.
 
sheck33 once bubbled...


one, nobody said that other agency's classes are a 'bad' thing but they are seriously lacking.


Word play is great eh sheck? "Seriously lacking" is not a "good" thing where i come from

DIRF is not advanced training, these are the basic skills taught that should be taught in any agency's OW class. Just MHO.

Cool, as you know we differ on that opinion

The statement: 'Diving accident occurence of 0.00004 or less ' by itself is meaningless.

Meaningless only if it refutes your stand. One accident in a gazillion dives is meaningful if it happens to you or yours. At a minimum 0.00004 means all is not broken, considering we are dealing with humans here

Luckily the vast majority of OW divers that get certified never dive again after their class for a variety of reasons.

Yup, agree with you totally. How come the ones who do keep diving are not droppin like flies? How many people have DIRF training today?

GUE as of yet is the only agency to my knowledge that does have expiring c-cards and you need to do so many dives in the particular environment you were trained in to keep the card current, it is amazing that this isnt done by other agency's.

A good start i will agree. What stops the diver from cookin their logbook if they didn't have time to do the dives or they did the dives but did not practice the skills needed. IMO the only way this will work is through trained supervision of skills. Not everyone is as honest as you sheck33

i do see a general attitude problem in the statement: 'everybody should decide for THEMSELVES what works for THEM. WHat about your divebuddy? You are a buddy TEAM, in a team you should consider what works for the TEAM, not just you.

More word play sheck33? GUE is not the only agency that stresses buddy skills. GUE may take a different approach but they did not invent the buddy system!

a beautiful example of this are these moldable gagomatic mouthpieces, great for the diver that uses them, not so great for a OOA dive buddy who now has to choke on a mouthpiece too.

I got the same "gag- o-riffic" response with my first Secure. Did the same thing we did with our football mouthguards. Trim out the rear portions, no more gag. Mines been ripped out of my mouth more than once & used in stress training senarios by several other divers with little problem. Standard mouthpiece on alternate air sources .... no problem.

Sorry if the quotes don't work out here, not sure how the multiple quote thing works yet

Phew ... think that editted right
 
To borrow the driving analogy offered above.....

Most of us drive cars. Most folks get the minimum required training and don't spend a lot of time working on their driving skills. Statistics show that driving is relatively safe.

So why get better? You've driven to work every day for the last 10 years and never been in an accident -- you MUST be a good driver! ;-)

Say you are driving 80 mph on the interstate and a tire blows. Say a child runs out in front of your car chasing a ball and you need to take quick evasive action. Say you hit a patch of ice or start hydroplaning and need to know how to react.

Are these everyday occurances? No. Will they happen to most of us in our driving careers -- the statistics also say no. Will you be able to handle them if you don't work on your skills? If you are lucky....but why leave safety to luck and statistics? If you practice to meet the minimum requirements......

But this isn't just about safety.....and as the statistics tell us above, we likely won't die even if we are poor divers (or poor drivers). But IMHO, diving (and driving) is more fun if you are better at it......unless you were that kid in the 4th grade dodge-ball game who somehow enjoyed being the first one "hit" during every game. I'm not a perfect diver or even a good diver (OK, so I do think I'm an excellent DRIVER).....but I am trying to practice, which is what GUE/DIR advocates.

My $0.02.
 
776 miles is still a lot to travel, plus I will need to buy BP/wings, 7ft hose and would they accept that I have a cobra for my computer and SPG.
 
large_diver,

I agree with what your saying, but i don't agree with the illusion that is sometimes implied that GUE is the only way to become a safe diver.

For example, the average diver would benefit from a better, more horizontal, less vertical trim, but it is not REQUIRED to be a safe diver. It's not all or nothing IMO.

I think what GUE is trying to accomplish is GREAT! But IMO it is not the only way to become a good diver.

Rainman out!
 
ScubaDan once bubbled...
776 miles is still a lot to travel, plus I will need to buy BP/wings, 7ft hose and would they accept that I have a cobra for my computer and SPG.
Only requirements for the DIRF class are a 5 or 7' primary hose, a 22 or 24" backup hose, no split fins, 25 dives and read the DIR fundamentals book. Your console will work just fine.

That's it!

See the requirements here:

http://www.fifthd.com/divestore/classes/Fundamentals.htm

Roak
 
Only requirements for the DIRF class are a 5 or 7' primary hose, a 22 or 24" backup hose, no split fins, 25 dives and read the DIR fundamentals book. Your console will work just fine.
There was a guy in our class in splits and the GUE guys were cool about it. When he was having a problem with one of the kicks, one of our instructors traded him fins and let him try the jets.

Although I cannot imagine trying to backward kick in split fins...it is hard enough to learn with stiff paddle fins.
 
gedunk once bubbled...


Meaningless only if it refutes your stand. One accident in a gazillion dives is meaningful if it happens to you or yours. At a minimum 0.00004 means all is not broken, considering we are dealing with humans here

A good start i will agree. What stops the diver from cookin their logbook if they didn't have time to do the dives or they did the dives but did not practice the skills needed. IMO the only way this will work is through trained supervision of skills. Not everyone is as honest as you sheck33

More word play sheck33? GUE is not the only agency that stresses buddy skills. GUE may take a different approach but they did not invent the buddy system!


Not sure why only your text appears in the quotes, weird, ah well.

as for the statistics, in this case the statistics statement is not meaningless because i agree or disagree with it. For the statement to be meaningfull one needs to categorize among the different groups of divers and what percentage of accidents is accounted for by what group.

The car analogy has nothing to do with diving, there are vastly more drivers than divers so they are hard to compare. But it is true that most drivers have no driving training beyond knowing how to operate the car and that is the cause of the staggering amount of car accidents on the road.

as for horizontal trim, there is the environment aspect of it, there is more to it than safety.

yes you are right, we can all invent the next 400 dives in our logbook but if i assume that that is the case the whole discussion is kinda pointless :D

lovely discussion huh :) :)
 
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