The subject line may not be correct as I am not sure if this guy was actually a PSD diver or not but he did participate with our training exercise. Here is the story:
Two weekends ago my dive team did a combined drill with a neighboring towns surface/ ice rescue team. It was a great drill with a lot of participation. The site was not that great for diving as there was 13 inches of ice and 5 feet of water. In addition the water was very stagnent and kind of smelly.
Anyway when we arrived and were told that there would be another diver working with us. Now I did not get the whole story but it seemed he was not part of any offical PSD team. I believe he dives out of LDS as an instructor or something. Anyway he had the Halcyon rig with double steel tanks (not sure about the manifold) He had his primary reg which appeared to be a long hose. (I did not measure it) He had the necklace reg and he had a small 13 cu pony with Argon for inflation. He had what appeared to be a black trilam suit. Whatever the details this rig looked big and bulky and I wonder how well it works for him if he does do PSD.
What was more interesting was what he did in the water. At first he was just a surface victim in the hole. Then he put on his gear and tended himself! He put an ice screw in and fed his rope through. He then went under to simulate a victim under the ice which is where our team came into play. We put divers into another hole and worked our operations from there. The drill went well and we practiced our spider crawl with ice picks under the ice since swimming was not an option. I did not like the self tending thing as who would know he was having a problem.
It was a good drill and it was interesting to see the DIR guy and his gear. As I have started to read more about DIR and its practices I try to evaluate what could benefit PSD diving. I try to do this will all diving techniques and information I come across. I am always looking to improve the diving experience and above all safety.
Not sure if any other PSD divers have looked at different techniques like DIR but it would be interesting to hear about it.
Mark
P.S. on a surface support note make sure to purchase different color ropes. The surface support team we worked with had all the same color ropes. When the yanked on what they thought was the stokes rope to pull in the victim they actually yanked on of the tenders. I never really noticied that our dive team had different color ropes.
Two weekends ago my dive team did a combined drill with a neighboring towns surface/ ice rescue team. It was a great drill with a lot of participation. The site was not that great for diving as there was 13 inches of ice and 5 feet of water. In addition the water was very stagnent and kind of smelly.
Anyway when we arrived and were told that there would be another diver working with us. Now I did not get the whole story but it seemed he was not part of any offical PSD team. I believe he dives out of LDS as an instructor or something. Anyway he had the Halcyon rig with double steel tanks (not sure about the manifold) He had his primary reg which appeared to be a long hose. (I did not measure it) He had the necklace reg and he had a small 13 cu pony with Argon for inflation. He had what appeared to be a black trilam suit. Whatever the details this rig looked big and bulky and I wonder how well it works for him if he does do PSD.
What was more interesting was what he did in the water. At first he was just a surface victim in the hole. Then he put on his gear and tended himself! He put an ice screw in and fed his rope through. He then went under to simulate a victim under the ice which is where our team came into play. We put divers into another hole and worked our operations from there. The drill went well and we practiced our spider crawl with ice picks under the ice since swimming was not an option. I did not like the self tending thing as who would know he was having a problem.
It was a good drill and it was interesting to see the DIR guy and his gear. As I have started to read more about DIR and its practices I try to evaluate what could benefit PSD diving. I try to do this will all diving techniques and information I come across. I am always looking to improve the diving experience and above all safety.
Not sure if any other PSD divers have looked at different techniques like DIR but it would be interesting to hear about it.
Mark
P.S. on a surface support note make sure to purchase different color ropes. The surface support team we worked with had all the same color ropes. When the yanked on what they thought was the stokes rope to pull in the victim they actually yanked on of the tenders. I never really noticied that our dive team had different color ropes.