Dumb AOW question

[TSandM]

Just remember that every one of those dives is a chance to practice your buoyancy control, trim, and situational awareness. There are not that many skills involved in any of them (although the nav dive is a little involved) so you should have bandwidth to work on your basic diving, at the same time you're focusing on the material for the dive in question.

 

[jewelofnile69]

Just remember that every one of those dives is a chance to practice your buoyancy control, trim, and situational awareness. There are not that many skills involved in any of them (although the nav dive is a little involved) so you should have bandwidth to work on your basic diving, at the same time you're focusing on the material for the dive in question.

Thank you! We decided to add on nitrox to this as well.

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Question on the deep dive/narcosis/nitrox:

You can get narcosis at 100 feet or more no matter what gas you are diving with, correct? We are combining our nitrox class with AOW so does it make sense to do our deep dive (required) as one of our nitrox dives? (That's what our instructor is having us do so just curious as I don't know what the deep dive all entails.) (Reading the narcosis thread earlier is just making me wonder and my husband and I have differing opinions on our nitrox dive.)

 

[TSandM]

You can get narcosis at 100 feet or more no matter what gas you are diving with, correct?​

In general, the consensus is that Nitrox is no less narcotic than air. Helium mixes ARE less narcotic, which is why technical divers use them.

It makes sense to do your deep dive on Nitrox, because it will reduce your nitrogen absorption. The 80 to 100 foot range is where Nitrox is most beneficial.

 

[jewelofnile69]

In general, the consensus is that Nitrox is no less narcotic than air. Helium mixes ARE less narcotic, which is why technical divers use them.

It makes sense to do your deep dive on Nitrox, because it will reduce your nitrogen absorption. The 80 to 100 foot range is where Nitrox is most beneficial.

Great, thank you!!

 

[gcarter]

I did my AOW and deep last weekend. Our LDS is pretty smart about it - when we signed up for the AOW, we were told we would be doing 9 dives. If we wanted to pay the fees, we could get the Deep and PPB certs as well, but we didn't HAVE too, we were welcome to just do the dives. I thought the Deep card worth having, so did sign up for that as well.

We did, in order, PPB, Nav, Night, 3 X Deep (80), Deep (120), Search & Recovery, PPB. All in all a great experience. Enjoy your course!

 

[jewelofnile69]

I did my AOW and deep last weekend. Our LDS is pretty smart about it - when we signed up for the AOW, we were told we would be doing 9 dives. If we wanted to pay the fees, we could get the Deep and PPB certs as well, but we didn't HAVE too, we were welcome to just do the dives. I thought the Deep card worth having, so did sign up for that as well.

We did, in order, PPB, Nav, Night, 3 X Deep (80), Deep (120), Search & Recovery, PPB. All in all a great experience. Enjoy your course!

Thanks for the recap!!!

 

[supergaijin]

Gcarter

that sounds like a decent AOW course as opposed to the typical AOW Attendance Certs given which are sometimes given out to divers who have no business diving deeper than 40ft.

 

[Ordie]

Bill's last post explained it very well. One thing I wanted to add. Your location is also a factor in deciding which dives to do for AOW. Being in Madison WI you are probably not going to do a drift dive for example. That may be why the shops in your area use the same dives for AOW classes. We are limited here in north Texas also.

As Bill said not a stupid question. You will not learn if you do not ask.

 

[jewelofnile69]

Thank you! Yes, our instructor gave us a few options (based on our materials) and of course he said drift (and a few others) aren't available to us. So we are going to stick with the ones he suggested as I feel they are the most practical.

Read through 3 of the 5 sections so far (as well as a few others). Now I'm really looking forward to our class!

 

[TomZ]

OK, I'm officially confused now. I currently am PADI OW. I am PADI Nitrox certified. I have one of two drysuit dives remaining for PADI Drysuit certification. Do my full certifications count towards AOW, or do I have to do additional "Adventure" dives? It doesn't make sense (to me) to just dip a toe into a subject, completing the entire course does.