Finished the OW classroom & confined water

[RTW]

We (my wife, brother-in-law & myself) finished the PADI OW classroom & confined water this past weekend.

There were only 5 students in the class, so things went quickly and provided more time to practice buoyancy control, etc.

The Instructors were great, but they didn’t volunteer many tips. I will offer the following on the things that I saw fellow students having the most trouble with: (Those with experience please agree, disagree, and/or add.)

1. When doing the breathe-without-mask, tilt your head down so that the regulator exhaust is not in your face. It’s rather disconcerting to have air bubbles hitting your nose. The same applies to mask removal-replacement-purging.

2. When trying to achieve neutral buoyancy, purge and inflate your BCD in small bursts and wait several seconds for each to take affect before doing it again. Use inhalation and exhalation for small adjustments.

I removed 4lbs of weight the second day in the pool and was still able to maintain neutral buoyancy without problem. I'll try to remove more on the checkout dives to see how it goes.

It was a blast, and I can’t wait to do the checkout dives in the Madison Quarry weekend after next!!

Let's go diving!!!!! :scubadive

 

[RTW]

After the fact, we all agreed we were a bit nervous about doing the sip-air-from-free-flowing-regulator for no good reason. It's surprisingly easy to take normal breaths!

 

[dive_lover88]

you are onli a few steps ( not literally) away from getting your 1st C-card and about to start a journey of lifelong diving

 

[verybaddiver]

"I removed 4lbs of weight the second day in the pool and was still able to maintain neutral buoyancy without problem."

you were obviously never neutrally buoyant at the surface then :>. This is one of my big problems with so many open water courses, they simply do not bother with trying to get you to know what proper weighting is. i personally think the first thing you should ever do when getting in on your first confined dive is get properly weighted, i simply don't understand why instructors continue the class without letting students properly weight. Maybe this is just my dive club? but we spent absolutely no time with the surface buoyancy checks! it took me about 10 OW dives before i fully understood what it felt like to be neutrally bouyant at the surface..

 

[tx.lakerats]

you sound like you are getting the hang of this quickly.... keep up the good work and always remember... bubbles up!!

 

[RTW]

you were obviously never neutrally buoyant at the surface then :>. This is one of my big problems with so many open water courses, they simply do not bother with trying to get you to know what proper weighting is. i personally think the first thing you should ever do when getting in on your first confined dive is get properly weighted, i simply don't understand why instructors continue the class without letting students properly weight. Maybe this is just my dive club? but we spent absolutely no time with the surface buoyancy checks! it took me about 10 OW dives before i fully understood what it felt like to be neutrally bouyant at the surface..

That's correct. We did not spend any time getting properly weighted. The Instructor did mention that they encourage independance. He meant it.

 

[dive_lover88]

But isn't it abit too much? ain't he supposed to guide you along? Can any instructor address this? my OW instructor did help the class to get properly weighted.

 

[JodiBB]

This is one of my big problems with so many open water courses, they simply do not bother with trying to get you to know what proper weighting is. i personally think the first thing you should ever do when getting in on your first confined dive is get properly weighted, i simply don't understand why instructors continue the class without letting students properly weight. Maybe this is just my dive club? but we spent absolutely no time with the surface buoyancy checks! it took me about 10 OW dives before i fully understood what it felt like to be neutrally bouyant at the surface..

That's odd...I've done 3 of my 4 OW dives for my OW cert and EVERY dive (Confined or OW), my instructor always does a buoyancy check. Then, at the bottom, she always has us do a fin pivot. This way we can understand what it feels like to be neutrally buoyant at the surface and at the bottom...this is standard with her.

Also...another tip...whenever we surface, my instructor will not allow us to use our inflator to get there. We must always kick to the surface (slowly ascending) and then orally inflate our BCD at the surface. This is a great exercise as it teaches us not to have to be dependent on on our inflator but on ourselves...

 

[verybaddiver]

That's odd...I've done 3 of my 4 OW dives for my OW cert and EVERY dive (Confined or OW), my instructor always does a buoyancy check. Then, at the bottom, she always has us do a fin pivot. This way we can understand what it feels like to be neutrally buoyant at the surface and at the bottom...this is standard with her.

Also...another tip...whenever we surface, my instructor will not allow us to use our inflator to get there. We must always kick to the surface (slowly ascending) and then orally inflate our BCD at the surface. This is a great exercise as it teaches us not to have to be dependent on on our inflator but on ourselves...

From my experience with the padi open water course, its more important to get down than it is to actually be neutrally buoyant at the surface, they dont care if you have too much weight, just aslong as its enough. Like i said this will obviously vary with instructors, maybe its just that the PADI instructors i have seen are lazy? :> (should probably learn to dive with a better one). Underwater is a different matter obviously, since you can always become neutrally buoyant, simply by adding more air into the bc, with an obvious extra cost to air, if you are over weighted, :>.

your second paragraph makes absolutely no sense to me :>, surely you remove air from your bc when you ascend, otherwise you'd get a uncontrolled ascent, so obviously you should use fins to surface...
btw for all you tekies i think? lift is different in your situation, i'm still quite new and don't yet understand the need for lift on dual tank bc's

 

[JodiBB]

your second paragraph makes absolutely no sense to me :>, surely you remove air from your bc when you ascend, otherwise you'd get a uncontrolled ascent, so obviously you should use fins to surface...

What my instructor has seen (and what I experienced after talking with other students on my boat), new divers sometimes have the tendency of relying too much on their low pressure inflator and ascend too quickly as a result. My instructor wants us to A) learn how to control our ascention through our own power, rather than depending on our equipment and B) learn how to remain buoyant on our own accord as well.

When other students on my boat had heard that I could not use my low pressure inflater to make myself buoyant, they thought my instructor was "too strict" but I'm glad I've learned how to become self-reliant to keep myself buoyant.