Somewhere around here the students say "I just wanted to see the pretty fishes, enough of this endless discussion of equipment advantages and disadvantages, I'm going home"
[RANT]
I don't know, I see many people asking questions on this (and other) board, I don't blame them, which come down to very basic stuff for which imo their instructor should have provided some sort of information, whether the student takes it or not is not the question. After all, there's loads of stuff and useles questions in the OW book, so you might as well have a decent "equipment" section.
But on the other hand, I understand you, let's make it as basic as possible, who cares if divers know what they're doing. Let's also not bother have students with decent equipment and throw some crap-regs and ill-fitting fins at them, they don't know if there's anything better, ignorance is bliss!
So far, some of the shocking gear-related stuff I've seen:
- someone unaware of open-heels fins diving full foot fins in 7°C water, needless to say he wasn't feeling too well
- a diver trying to put my tank on my back, I wasn't too happy.
- "Why is your bcd not like mine?"
- coming from drysuit certified divers: a 7mm neoprene suit is better than a trilaminate suit because it's warmer with the same undergarment (still trying to get my head around that one
)
- "Why would you want some ****** socks instead of shoes on your drysuit? So that you need shoes to go to the water and leave them there, ready to get stolen?" (Yes, this guy was genuinely unaware of how you use rockboots, but had been diving a drysuit and teaching it for a while)
- "Aluminium tanks are lighter because aluminium is lighter than steel" (duh, isn't it obvious, a kg of feathers is lighter than a kg of lead)
- "This 1kg of lead only weighs 960g". (I'm not making this up
GROUPE 2 - Lest Plomb brut 1Kg , some others really complain about 13g! I'm not sure what is most shocking, that people weigh their weights, or that they seem to believe 40g are gonna make a difference, even if you carry 10 of them, the difference is still minor)
Should I keep going?
At the end of the day, it seems so obvious that the typical OW book should contain this and a lot of other stuff "we all" know, but it doesn't. Neither does AOW, nor any of the following courses. This includes techniques (eg kicks), or equipment (BPW etc), or combinations (Why the long hose?). It could also help end dumb myths such as the "you absolutely need to do a quarter turn back after you opened the valve". But instead, more "advanced" courses require you to draw a regulator and explain how it works, because that's what makes you a better diver. Heck, in France, for FFESSM, you need (I think?) to write a 50-ish pages script if you want to reach levels that are similar to course directors. Here's a few of them: "fins and kicks for scuba diving"
http://www.ffessm-ctridf.fr/accueil/PDF/PalmesEtPalmagesEnPlongeeSousMarine.pdf, "frog kick" gives a single hit which says "we do not describe it here because it is a very slow kick and can only be used horizontally", in this one, called "scuba kicking"
http://www.codep81ffessm.fr/images/stories/memoire/palmage.pdf, "frog" does not even give a single hit.
Finally, I could also summarize the OW course in one line: "Here, put this in your mouth, breathe, and when the needle points to 60 you ascend while breathing out, now go look at the pretty fishes", so maybe taking it to the extreme is not the right way either, wadayathink?
[/RANT]
. Drysuit diving is none of these.
