PADI Master Diver Certification

[loosebits]

Rand you have serious personality & insecurity issues...I do feel sorry for you---I think you should seek help and get a handle on your SB 'rage' and insulting ways. You have proven once again in grand style that fact throughout this thread. My only mistake which I accept full responsiblity for is trying to carry out a mature dialog with you.

Yes, I was the only one being childish. That was sarcasm of course, a rhetorical device you seem to favor.

Regardless, can you please elaborate on what task loading issues that I would be exposed to diving at 150' on 21/35 that I wouldn't be exposed to diving to 150' on air?

Furthermore, can you please explain to me how four more dives prepares you for taking advanced trimix when you only took entry level two weeks ago while at the same time berating me for learning this very slowly and on my own?

If your only point from this point forward is that I'm mean and have some serious character flaw then perhaps the whine and cheese forum would be a more appropriate place. I won't be joining you.

 

[FIXXERVI6]

Rand you have serious insecurity issues...I do feel sorry for you---get a handle on your SB 'rage' and insulting ways. You have proven once again in grand style that fact throughout this thread. My only mistake which I accept full responsiblity for is trying to carry out a mature dialog with you. I do wish you well though.

Serioulsy not trying to poke a fire here, but I've been waiting for an answer to rands question regarding Trimix, I'm seriously interested in hearing the response, if you have been offended and don't feel like answering so be it but if you have not answered just because the focus was shifted can you please answer it? again I'm just curious of the answer and will not flame if you do not reply or answer.

 

[stardust]

Are you an instructor? If you are, try some of what some of us are suggesting. If it doesn't work or help then by all means come on here and tell every one that we are full of **** and that you prefer 5 hours in the pool and certifying bouncing divers who have never done a dive other than bouncing around in a pack mindlessly following the instructor.

Im not a scuba instructor, "just an average diver," I just think it can still be a happy time and not have overmilitarized instruction and everyone can still get the skills they need. An OW card is nothing more than a license to learn. I think its great that there are different agencies with different philosophies so an individual can get the type instruction they do best with and want. Im glad you can throw away the $ that people wanting to learn have to spend. Im poorer and need new doubles. Chill.

 

[Walter]

I'm not aware of anyone in this thread who teaches diving with a militaristic approach.

 

[FIXXERVI6]

Im not a scuba instructor, "just an average diver," I just think it can still be a happy time and not have overmilitarized instruction and everyone can still get the skills they need. An OW card is nothing more than a license to learn. I think its great that there are different agencies with different philosophies so an individual can get the type instruction they do best with and want. Im glad you can throw away the $ that people wanting to learn have to spend. Im poorer and need new doubles. Chill.

If you really feel an OW card is a license to learn, then I would love to start a movement to keep OW divers off of dive boats and not allowed to dive on reefs and make them use their "license to learn" to learn some place where they can not do damange.

calling an OW card a license to learn is just silly to me, but looking at how crappy divers are these days that sounds like a good description because when these guys hit the water, they dont' know how to dive.

Instead why don't you just let them "learn" during class then turn them loose.

 

[loosebits]

Stardust, is a OW card a license to learn how to share air, clear a mask or read tables? Of course not, these skills should be taught in OW so that the student is very comfortable with them. Another skill that is very important to be able to dive safely is buoyancy control. Not being able to hold a safety stop can be dangerous. Not being able to maintain depth on a wall dive can also be dangerous. Not being able to avoid a reef can be painful for both you and the reef.

Besides the evidence I see at every local dive site and more so on the reefs that OW divers are not learning these skills is the virtual admission of that by at least one agency by creating a separate class for it. If everyone was taught buoyancy control in OW, whose signing up for the specialty? Someone suggested that also rusty divers are part of the market. Possibly but I doubt it makes up the bulk of the students. The experience I've had with divers re-entering the sport is that it's gear assembly and the like that they've forgotten (e.g. the tank valve facing the wrong way) but buoyancy control, provided they learned it the first time around, is very much like riding a bike. Besides, they already have a class specifically designed to refresh divers skills.

Of course, even if rusty divers are taking the class, no one could tell me that recently certified divers don't take the class also.

 

[stardust]

Stardust, is a OW card a license to learn how to share air, clear a mask or read tables? Of course not, these skills should be taught in OW so that the student is very comfortable with them. Another skill that is very important to be able to dive safely is buoyancy control. Not being able to hold a safety stop can be dangerous. Not being able to maintain depth on a wall dive can also be dangerous. Not being able to avoid a reef can be painful for both you and the reef.

Besides the evidence I see at every local dive site and more so on the reefs that OW divers are not learning these skills is the virtual admission of that by at least one agency by creating a separate class for it. If everyone was taught buoyancy control in OW, whose signing up for the specialty? Someone suggested that also rusty divers are part of the market. Possibly but I doubt it makes up the bulk of the students. The experience I've had with divers re-entering the sport is that it's gear assembly and the like that they've forgotten (e.g. the tank valve facing the wrong way) but buoyancy control, provided they learned it the first time around, is very much like riding a bike. Besides, they already have a class specifically designed to refresh divers skills.

Of course, even if rusty divers are taking the class, no one could tell me that recently certified divers don't take the class also.

I'm just trying to make the point, if you can read with an open mind, that there are people out there that are not going to be comfortable with what "I" think is a militaristic approach. I've spent time with these people and heard their philosophies and every day I am thankful for my instructor who was willing to treat me like an individual person and not an Army private. I've talked to people who started diving back when PADI was more like this that didnt complete the program and won't try again. It's easy to say let them go skiing, but I think it's a loss, not just in money, but some of them are really fun, nice people. Would I like to see everyone have lots more hours and dives (and decent equipment) before going on the reefs etc? Sure. Do I know that some people make it through dives just by the grace of God? Sure. I just think it has to be accessible at more than a military level. If I learned to dive, anyone can. When I finished OW class I could do the skills you listed at an OW level, it took a few (hundred) more dives before they were pretty. Thats what I mean by 'license to learn.' I think it's nice too when other people are willing to help new divers and so often I see the attitude of "I'm wayyy too advanced and tekkie to even talk to them much less help them." Can't we just all get along?

 

[FIXXERVI6]

I'm just trying to make the point, if you can read with an open mind, that there are people out there that are not going to be comfortable with what "I" think is a militaristic approach. I've spent time with these people and heard their philosophies and every day I am thankful for my instructor who was willing to treat me like an individual person and not an Army private. I've talked to people who started diving back when PADI was more like this that didnt complete the program and won't try again. It's easy to say let them go skiing, but I think it's a loss, not just in money, but some of them are really fun, nice people. Would I like to see everyone have lots more hours and dives (and decent equipment) before going on the reefs etc? Sure. Do I know that some people make it through dives just by the grace of God? Sure. I just think it has to be accessible at more than a military level. If I learned to dive, anyone can. When I finished OW class I could do the skills you listed at an OW level, it took a few (hundred) more dives before they were pretty. Thats what I mean by 'license to learn.' I think it's nice too when other people are willing to help new divers and so often I see the attitude of "I'm wayyy too advanced and tekkie to even talk to them much less help them." Can't we just all get along?

I don't beleive anyone is talking about a military style approach to teaching OW diving, I haven't seen a single post saying "They should have to go through a SEAL course before they get their OW card"

 

[loosebits]

Well, I hope I've never given the novice diver the impression that I'm too advanced to bother with helping them. When I've taken the new diver out to the lake with my usual buddy, I let them know that I will be happy to do some shallower dives with them but I was also planning on doing some deeper dives that they should sit out.

Anyway, I don't think anyone here is advocating a boot camp style for an OW class. I am simply advocating a higher set of standards. I don't want to keep prospective divers from signing up because the classes are too long or too expensive but if that's what it takes to let people survive a dive not by the grace of god but by the quality of their training then I wish that was a sacrifice the industry would be prepared to make.

Of course, the industry's number one goal is not training divers but making money. There is nothing we can do about that and you can't fault them for it. What we can do is try and raise the awareness level of the prospective diver so that they understand what they get out of an accelerated class versus the standard class versus somthing like a university class so they can make an informed decision as to which path is best for them.

Since 99% of the time, the prospective diver knows absolutly nothing about what to expect from an OW class, the only thing they have to go on is price and a PADI 5 Star Facility sticker on their window.

By the way, my mother was OW certified by a PADI 5 Star facility and the level of skill they threw her in the water with was almost crimnal (and perhaps would have been if things turned out differently). I hate to think what a shop without that rating would do.

I completely agree with you that OW should only be the begining of a diver's education, both formal, self-training and training by a mentor but I've seen that license-to-learn phrase thrown around by professionals as a justification for sending divers in the water without having the basic skills. I wonder when that phrase was first coined? I'm willing to bet its around the same time that OW classes stopped creating OW divers.

 

[Walter]

my mother was OW certified by a PADI 5 Star facility and the level of skill they threw her in the water with was almost crimnal (and perhaps would have been if things turned out differently). I hate to think what a shop without that rating would do.

It's not a "rating" and it has nothing to do with quality.