Drills

[RumBum]

It's spring. Some divers are new, some are just getting back in the water, some have dove chilly and happy all winter long. What drills do you and your buddies do regularly? Describe it.
I'll start with the obvious one: Out of air. My buddy and I try to "surprise" each other occasionally with an OOA drill. It will start with a OK sign (signal it is a drill and not a real emergency) and then the OOA sign, followed by an octo supplied to the diver who is playing OOA, then more OK signs.
What do you do?

 

[Meng_Tze]

Have you tried it without an 'okay' signal first? If you do an okay, indicate it is a drill, the buddy is prepared for what is coming. How will they react if there is a surprise?

Drop reg from mouth, show OOG and see what happens (hold on to reg in case response is slow), also try this from a little distance.... see how this goes. Those are real life scenarios......

As for us:

On a regular (surprise me, no advance warning) basis:
OOG: sharing gas, moving off/up a bit and then cutting the drill.
light failure: primary light failure, swich to back up and rearrange team formation.


Planned drills (no surprise, but planned ahead of time, or show that a drill is about to be done- "you watch me")
valve drills: isolating broken valve/1st stage/lost gass issue (double tanks only)
Complete dark/silt out/lost mask: go to line, start exit if needed
Lost buddy/line: initiate search paterns
Lost bouyancy: alternate, if no go, team help
Passive panic: move diver out (seldom)
Switching stages/deco's (even though it is part of active diving, sometimes we take one/two extra tanks just to practice moving stuff around)


Combinations of above.... This is where it gets exiting

on an exit..... oops buddy OOG. Switchin stage... oops buddy OOG. OOG... oops light failure....

But these are all drills we do in caves.

In OW we usually only do OOG, valve, stage and buoyancy.


Please be aware thatwe have been diving together for a long time, know each others skills and mindset. If you do not have a regular buddy/new buddy, I would advise to take it VERY carefully. maybe practice in a controled environment first. You want to make sure that the buddy can do his/her drills before 'throwing' them at each other in real life dives. A drill should not become a real life situation.....

 

[Pyromaniac]

If you do an okay, indicate it is a drill, the buddy is prepared for what is coming.

A drill should not become a real life situation.....

I would tend to be careful doing this - for diving drills or any other activities emergency drills.
I hate to think what would happen in any activity if a recognised emergency signal became a routine thing to be used as a training aid without it being planned beforehand with some precursor signal.

'Familiarity breeds contempt' springs to mind, as does 'the boy that cried wolf'

Not saying dont practice - but I feel a practice or drill should be known in some way to be just that. You dont want it reversed
- A real life situation should not become a drill .....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I would tend to be careful doing this - for diving drills or any other activities emergency drills.
I hate to think what would happen in any activity if a recognised emergency signal became a routine thing to be used as a training aid without it being planned beforehand with some precursor signal.

'Familiarity breeds contempt' springs to mind, as does 'the boy that cried wolf'

Not saying dont practice - but I feel a practice or drill should be known in some way to be just that. You dont want it reversed
- A real life situation should not become a drill .....

I agree ... if you are planning drills it should be discussed as part of your dive briefing ... e.g. "at some point in this dive I'm going to pull a practice OOA".

Some of my buddies live for drills ... they have way too much fun with them. I'll sometimes get an OOA right about the time I'm busy shooting a bag, or lining up a photograph ... but hey, in the real world Mr. Murphy doesn't always wait till a convenient time to come a'callin' ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jason B]

I'm with Meng Tze, an okay followed by an OOA is not a "surprise".

I was just in a class where the instructor would look to see when you and your buddy were not paying attention to each other. As soon as he would see you exhale your breath, he would point to you and say "OOA". At that point you had to spit your reg out (no air in lungs) and go find your buddy. Swimming to buddy flashing light to signal OOA. If your buddy didn't see you signal you had to rip the reg from his mouth to get air. Very realistic and really drove home the idea that 25ft is too far away from your buddy.
It was also great to see how I would react when someone rapes me for my reg. I surprisingly went right for my back-up!

 

[Gary D.]

Here is a sample of what we do.

No warnings. Giving a warning takes the "real life" element of surprise out of it.

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=129998

Gary D.

 

[Guba]

On a different note (but it's something I'm putting together right now, so I thought the thread was close enough), our organization holds an annual "Dive Rodeo". It's not what it sounds like...no contests involved. Instead, we string a course with line over a wide area. Along the line we stage "challenges" with written scenarios and even reminders. Diver pairs go through the course at their own pace and complete the challenges. The challenges might include OOA scnearios, buddy breathing for a distance, mask clearing and/or exchanges, navigation, and regulator recovery, among others.
By the way, each stage also has a "reverse poker run" that we use for prizes at the end of the day. In short, we make 'drills' a fun event toward the first of the diving season to dust off those skills that many of us in this area might get rusty on over the winter months. We also encourage divers to keep those skills sharp throughout the season with repeated practice.

 

[Meng_Tze]

'Familiarity breeds contempt' springs to mind, as does 'the boy that cried wolf'

- A real life situation should not become a drill .....

To us any OOG signal is real. There is no drill untill the OOG diver signals "cut" and hands back the reg.. That boy can cry wolf (OOG) all he wants, every time gas is donated.

On the other hand dont think that this happens every dive, many times..... it is just when you feel that it has been a little while, when you feel like it, keeping it random. I know I can get gas in OOG situation when it is unexpected.....

 

[TSandM]

During this recent trip to the BVI, we did OOA drills essentially every day . . . which came in handy when the hose came loose on my primary reg, and dealing with that problem was almost a yawn.

I also do reg exchanges on my own quite frequently, just to stay comfortable with not having a reg in my mouth.

I dive regularly with a buddy just to practice skills, and especially for me, mask removal and replacement, because I don't like being down there and not being able to see. So I make myself do it.

 

[Skeeter1097]

I don't have a fool time buddy. I dive with four deferent people most all the time. They defer quite a bet from each other. I practice a lot of drills and get a lot of deferent reactions. Believe me I do have my preference of whom I would like to be with if the world came down. I do practice solo dive skills Even for diving with others,