The Class was great. Drysuits were provided by DUI, and Interspiro brought there Diveator system.
The class covered the basics. Full face skills (flood and clear, remove and replace etc). Drysuit skills (inversion correction, emergency procedures). We also covered flying your drysuit, instead of using your BCD for correction. We were shown that if you are properly weighted, just adding enough air to stop the squeeze will make you neutral.
I found it much easier to get good trim in the drysuit than in a wetsuit.
When whe finished the basic Full face and drysuit stuff, we then learned to use the Interspiro Diveator system. It's a self contained system that has BCD, Fullface, and surface supplied air with hard wire comms.
At the end we did a drill called "The Blue Monster" it's a square pattern on the bottom of the 4 foot part of the pool. Each leg is about 20' with a regulator at each corner. You swim to each reg and take one breath. between the 2nd and 3rd, and the 4th and 1st regs is a simple skill (deploy a buoy or cut some string). You follow the line for the entire course (don't pull the line or the instructors will cut it). You do the course 3 times, once with mask and fins, once with fins and no mask, and once in fins and with mask blacked out or turned around to render you blind.
All in all this is a great class, and they are planning to have it again next year. I definitely recommend anyone that is interested come and take it. It pushed my skills and my comfort to a level that I didn't think I could reach. The instructors were great, guys from Lex Fire Department, Jeff Stiggal from Interspiro, and Buck Buchanan from Dive911. I am going to take the class again next year even if I get on the Lex FD Dive team.
