Padi AOW

[Zeke XA3]

KJackson60 put up most of the points,

But the Advanced Open Water diver qualification is a chance to experience, with an instructor 5 different types of diving.

One of the instructors duties is "screen and evaluate all student divers to ensure they meet the required prerequisites and posses the necessary knowledge and skills to enter the program" PADI manual - Adventures in diving 1-3

If the diver is an active diver this could just be a check of his OW card and a quick question, for a nervous looking diver or someone who completed the OW course 3 years ago and never dived since this could be a check out dive. So you may have to demo some skills in that case in the pool to satisfy the instructor.

For the qualification itself it depends on what dives you chose but you would have had to do the two below, abbreviated from the manual...

Deep Dive (Mandatory)
Skill - Descent
Skill - Complete task above and below water and compare time
Skill - Compare depth gauges
Skill - Ascend at less than 18m/m
Skill - Perform a safety stop

Nav Dive (Mandatory)
Skill - Maintain neutral buoyancy
Skill - Kick cycles and average time to complete 30m
Skill - Navigate and return using the above
Skill - How to use a compass underwater
Skill - Swim and return using compass
Skill - Swim a square

If you want to check any other just tell us what the dive type was and we can help

 

[PhilF]

I was currious for those of you that have your AOW cert what skills you had to demo during the check out dives for the course.

(August 2006)
Deep Dive
Underwater Navigation
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Search and Recovery
Wreck

 

[alcadhrim]

On my (current) experience, I'm waiting the last dive (...), AOW improves a lot of skills even they are not required.
Navigation is absolutely mandatory and this dive has completely changed my "way-of-dive", Deep is mainly interesting to go on deeper dive sites (It was not my purpose when I started the AOW), I cannot say enough that PPB (Buoyancy) is a really great experience and training.
The other dives I've choosen are Fishes indentification and Naturalism and the second one is very interesting too (I wait the last one as I said).

The real question is not for me the skills, you may ask "What can I enjoy in my dives?" and then perform the adventure dive in question.

My instructor has summarized like this: "OW is taking care about yourself, AOWD is taking care about what you can do during diving and Rescue is taking care about the others."

 

[rescue15]

The AOW classification has too many interpretations. As absolute as everyone wants to make it, the designation is very subjective.

With one organization it is no more than an intro to several specialties to let you experience different dives you may not know about or think you will like. Other organizations require you to have several specialties, with some being manditory and have a minimum number of logged dives.

None of these programs make you an Advanced diver. This can only be achieved thru experience and training...alot of emphasis on experience. Think about it...do you think 3 navigation dives makes you an expert?

I would consider someone advanced if they have an extensive number of dives in a variety of situations.

I would not consider someone who has 100 dives in a quarry only, experienced when diving a 150 foot wreck in the North Atlantic.

Jist my 2 cents

Steve

 

[cooperscuba]

For the qualification itself it depends on what dives you chose but you would have had to do the two below, abbreviated from the manual...

Deep Dive (Mandatory)
Skill - Descent
Skill - Complete task above and below water and compare time
Skill - Compare depth gauges
Skill - Ascend at less than 18m/m
Skill - Perform a safety stop

You need to update your manual, dood. PADI changed Deep this year. You no longer perform a timed task (that has moved in to the Deep Specialty course), but demonstrate colour changes at depth (which is a bit poor for my local environment as only red has disappeared at 30m). Also, the Deep Adventure dive can not be dive 1 or 2 of the AOW course.

 

[Zeke XA3]

Actually....

We are both wrong, if i need to quote it exactly i will get it out. But yes they have changed the order around for the skills (Color used to be dive 2 in spec, timed task dive one and now they have swapped) but the update after the one about dive 1 or 2 cannot be deep it was changed again. This was because the standards stated that you could not do the deep as dive 1 or 2 of the AOW. But you could do a deep adventure dive straight after open water if it was not part of an AOW course so they changed it to read along the lines of "you should assess the students skill and capability to do the deep adventure in diving dive" but did not limit when it could be done.