Excellent Valve Drill Help

[mania]

I thought it was

My momma always told me "Life is like a box of chocolates..."

Well
My GrandMa used to say:

Men are always kids, you only need to buy them different chocolate

Seems she also had something to do with Forest's Mum


Mania

 

[docmartin]

hey brucie, you certainly have been taking lots of heat here for pointing people to a very helpful link and daring to mention that your cave instructor was not very helpful. whatever else people may have to say about what you should/could have known before taking cave - if an instructor sees that you are having trouble with valve drills and he does not offer advice to help you work through it then he is not doing his job. i am also not sure what a comment like "that's a good article but you can find all that information here on this board" is supposed to do? i guess you should check before you provide any links to useful info if the same advice could not be pieced together from previous posts somewhere else??? all these reactions seem a little bit whacky. there is probably some prior history that I am missing but i hope you and others are not discouraged from recommending interesting reading.

 

[ianr33]

there is probably some prior history that I am missing but i hope you and others are not discouraged from recommending interesting reading.

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=184607

I dont see that Cave Instructors are in the business of teaching valve drills. They are in the business of teaching Cave Diving.

If you are doing a cave class (especially Full Cave) be competant with the gear you are going to use.

 

[Jason B]

Further more, if you are already intro cave certified, advanced wreck certified, trimix certified, and have had GUE's DIR-f, a valve drill should be something you can do in your sleep.

I wouldn't be in an overhead without being able to do a valve drill - heck, I wouldn't dive doubles if I couldn't do a valve drill.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I wouldn't dive doubles if I couldn't do a valve drill.

Not sure I'd go that far ... I had a mighty struggle learning how to reach my left post. If I didn't continue to dive doubles, I wouldn't have been able to keep working at it till I got the problem resolved.

For a variety of reasons, some folks just struggle with valve drills. It wasn't until someone on ScubaBoard pointed me to the Fitness for Divers link that I finally found exercises that would help me. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from offering helpful links and/or advice ... no matter what their history or what previous information existed elsewhere on ScubaBoard ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

I just discovered that my inability to reach my isolator appears to be suit-related. I can do it in my trilam suit, but using the exact same technique (mine) I cannot reach the isolator in the other suit. But I'm not going to stop diving doubles, and diving them in that suit; I can reach the two posts, and the isolator is the SECOND step in any failure. By that time, I will have closed a post and alerted my teammates, and if the isolator needs to be closed at that point, my teammate can come over and do it for me. Now, I probably wouldn't go into an overhead with that setup, but I'm happy with the risk/benefit ratio for the open water dives, even the deeper ones, that I currently do.

 

[Jason B]

Sorry, surely didn't mean to insinuate that you guys should not continue to dive doubles, that's my rule and applies to me. Note that I said "if I can't", not "if you can't".

 

[lamont]

there is probably some prior history that I am missing

yup. gotta dig around on at least 4 other forums to find all the history as well...

 

[docmartin]

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=184607

I dont see that Cave Instructors are in the business of teaching valve drills. They are in the business of teaching Cave Diving.

If you are doing a cave class (especially Full Cave) be competant with the gear you are going to use.

sounds a little formalistic to me and does not apply in any student teacher setting I am aware of. the student is a customer and the instructor provides a service. if i am having trouble with anything then i expect the instructor to share his knowledge and advice - if he has any. that does not cost him anything. it's his job. let's be real here - you should have learned boyancy skills during open water. does that mean that an instructor in any course after open water should just let you bumble and tumble about if you did not get it? also, if your technical instructor certified you to no fault of your own although you did not learn to do a proper valve drill does that mean you can not ask of any future instructor to show you how to do it? that's just silly and, fortunately, in reality the instructor who will not offer advice when he sees a student struggling with something is a rare moron and a bad business man to boot.
regarding cave specifically, you are sadly mistaken if you claim cave instructors are not in the business of teaching valve drills. they totally are. every cave class i know of includes valve drills. if it's a skill required for a class then my instructor should be glad to teach me or help me improve. Not to mention that there are PLENTY of people these days who do cavern to full cave in one week. more than a few of them never dove doubles before. what do you think are the odds that they have ever done a valve drill? and who exactly would be teaching them?

 

[Meng_Tze]

What intrigues me is that apparently all that Brucie touches has a long tail. I don't know what to make of that, but it jigs my curiosity.