Official vintage diving instruction?

[Akimbo]

That would be impossible here in the states, especially for a full course. By the time pool fees, insurance, and whatever else costs were covered $200 would be a joke.
A nitrox card costs more than that.

Performance Freediving gets $700 plus boat fees for their 3½ day course. The instructors travel all over the country and many of the students stay in a hotel. I can see an intensive 5 day course selling for a $1,000 if marketed properly. Maybe post-open-water certification, but start from the beginning. People would absorb a lot and actually begin to understand what they thought they knew. It is all about good value and marketing the prestige value.

 

[Deputy821]

ZKY wrote:"...$200 would be a joke."

Perhaps to you what we did was a joke. Please let us know how well you do.

For those who are not so cynical, there are now some underwater pictures posted with the same link. I hope you enjoy them.

http://www.vintagedoublehose.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5482&p=47086#p47086

Steve

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

ZKY wrote:"...$200 would be a joke.

Perhaps to you what we did was a joke. Please let us know how well you do.

Steve

Please don't misunderstand, I think what you guys did was great!

What I meant was that in the US with how things run over here and our beaurocracies $200 per person would never work. That wouldn't even pay to get the door open.
If you guys could do it for $200 each I'm gealous, believe me. I wish we had that kind of value and freedom to make things work.

 

[Deputy821]

This course was not done for profit. This course was created by members of the Historical Diving Society in Australia to show it can be done and to stimulate interest for our members. It also reduces liability and improves our safety. I don't think there will be much of a commercial interest but some can pursue it now, if they wish.

The members who participated, finally have valid certification which takes the wind out of sails of the 'nay-sayers' and those in the industry who like to criticize us. In other words, they want to see the plastic, we've got the plastic. We did the same thing with helmet diving. We certified 30 divers in antique standard dress helmets. In June a few more divers, who are not members, will attend the helmet course. That door is now open.

This course has given us the validation that many divers like to have. Not long after we obtained our helmet certification, we approached the Melbourne Aquarium about helmet dives with their sharks. They already allowed a dive shop to take scuba divers in. Once they knew we were certified helmet divers, the door was open.

See: HISTORICAL DIVING SOCIETY, SOUTH-EAST ASIA - PACIFIC and DIVING HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AUSTRALIA SEA ASIA - PORTLAND 2010

Already another agency is looking at helmet diving certification. Perhaps this will open the door for those wish to pursue vintage scuba too. Steve

 

[AnnSul]

I learned by reading the Navy Diver's manual, checked out from my local library. Some friends, who were already divers, took me to a few of the local quarries (snuck in past the dogs- private property) to run through skills and drills. Then to the shore for some drift dives out of the inlets, then for wreck dives.
Everyone was hunting bugs or portholes, even the captain.
We only got certified a few years later when we needed cards to buy air.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I'm going to resurrect this thread, and say that I learned by watching the movie The Silent World in a theator, then reading the same book three times while using the equipment (Healthways SCUBA regulator & 38 cf tank) in 1959, at age 14, to 1963. In 1963, our North Salem High School club, Salem Junior Aqua Club, hired a scuba instructor, Roy France, to come up from California and give us the course, which was LA County, using the New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving.

SeaRat

 

[JamesBon92007]

(I'm not sure what a "master" diver is)

Here it is a few years later and I think NAUI answered my question: Those of us who took those old, vigorous, demanding courses are considered to be "Master Divers." My evidence: I wrote to NAUI and requested a new C-Card with updated terminology because "Scuba Diver" was not real impressive and there's always a chance that someone, somewhere, someday might actually ask to see my card. So they sent me, based upon the course I took in 1969 plus the course I took (with my ex-wife) in 1984, a new card that proudly proclaims me as being a Master Diver.

Perhaps it's my air of self-confidence, perhaps it's the t-shirts from from off dive shops, but I cannot recall, in my 47 years of being a certified diver, anyone ever asking to see my C-Card. That includes many dive shops in Southern California and also on Maui, Puerto Vallarta, Cozumel, and Hawai'i. Most recently was last night when I went on the famous night dive with the mantas from Kona, Hawai'i. They had me fill out a form and told me to write down my C-Card number.

In any case, it is my understanding that in order to achieve Master Diver you must now pass at least eight separate courses. That may or may not indicate that we received eight times as much training back in the old days. Having said that, the only times I use a BC is when it is required (in Hawai'i and on dive boats). I have never used a computer. Of course none of us were trained to use a computer and most did not have a SPG until after 1970. PADI, according to something I read recently, is considering not teaching the Dive Tables any more. Hopefully any Vintage Dive Course will include the Dive Tables. My girlfriend recently took a PADI OW course in Cozumel (she did not complete the course) and it looks like the entire course would have taken about nine hours. I think I now understand why they have so many dive masters per diver on most dive boats. Fortunately for her she has me to double-check what she knows and does not know, but not everyone has a vintage dive buddy. Judging from the response I've seen to the multiple dive courses that many people take in order to obtain a higher level of certification I suspect that Vintage Diver would be in demand. But would that be higher or lower than Master Diver? I vote in favor of the GOD complex status I also think that if people will pay $400 each for eight courses they might view $1500 for a Vintage Diver course as a bargain. The C-Card should, naturally, play Handel's Hallelujah chorus whenever presented.

 

[covediver]

There is a reason the equipment and regimented training (push ups in tanks) went away. I doubt given the fitness level and sense of entitlement of the general public today too many would last in this type o training. The number of people who claim to be inspired by Sea Hunt are like the number of attendees at Woodstock, it gets larger every year far exceeding the people who saw the original show; it becomes a cultural touch stone; a kind of secret handshake into the presence of the older "cool kids". Let the true believers practice their pure art in small gatherings where smoothskin wetsuits and he-man cut swim trunks are the price of admission. Let them keep the tradition in their own way, so more "vintage" course might be in order to pass the traditions on to the newbies, just as vintage car clubs do so (what is a rotor and distributor cap?) or WWII or Civil War reenactors. I will say given rate at which local dive shops are going out of business, it may be that it may be as hard to find one as it was in the golden age of scuba.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

While I enjoyed watching Sea Hunt as a teenage diver, we also looked at it and said, "he switched tanks mid-dive," or "Mike's using a different regulator now," or "his J-reserve is down now," or "he's cutting the wrong hose." (Mike Nelson regularly cut the exhaust hose, which did not cut off the air supply to the diver, only made it free flow and run out faster.) When I went through the U.S. Naval School for Underwater Swimmers in 1967 (which, by the way, was a three-week course in scuba diving), they regularly berated the show, saying "Don't put your face mask up on your forehead like Mike Nelson, or you'll face 50 pushups." If you'll look at the photo below, you will see that the trainees are exiting the water with their masks on their face, mouthpiece in their mouth, and next to their buddy (this was after a 1500 yard underwater compass swim). If you didn't do that, and got separated from your buddy, you carried a six-inch thick, ten foot plus "buddy line" for the next 24 hours.

I don't see a vintage diving course going to these extremes, but incorporating the NAUI course outline from the early 1970s would be appropriate, as well as the use of double hose regulators, dive tables.

I do use a dive computer, as I find that they are very helpful in documenting my dives. You can see the graph of one of my dives below, so I would incorporate the newer technology, but keep the tables as a reference. But you need to be wary, as sometimes the computer is wrong; in this case, the dive represented in the graph was about 30 minutes long, whereas the computer graph on air consumption shows only 8 minutes. The water temperature was also in the 50s F, and not 32 degrees. So while the profile is nice, be aware of the problems and teach about them too. This is also why it may be important to teach the tables, as with a watch and tables for backup, you can determine when the computer is malfunctioning. (The readout of the computer real-time was fine; the printout was not.)

SeaRat

 

[JamesBon92007]

While I enjoyed watching Sea Hunt as a teenage diver, we also looked at it and said, "he switched tanks mid-dive," or "Mike's using a different regulator now," or "his J-reserve is down now," or "he's cutting the wrong hose."
SeaRat
View attachment 369132View attachment 369133

One of my favorites was the episode in which a woman diver was stuck under a heavy steel plate. Mike Nelson removed his tank etc and gave it to her at about 70 feet (if I remember correctly). He then proceeded to make a free ascent all the way to the surface without exhaling! He must have cast-iron lungs!