PADI OW Final Exam Questions that are either wrong or just bad

[Zef]

I have this comical image of a person holding their breath signaling repeatedly that they are OOG while the requested donor does nothing as they haven't been signaled donate air. I mean, if someone signals OOG and doesn't signal donate, they must not want a person to donate, right?

BSAC teaches the donating diver to "present" their octo, meaning to move their arms and stuff out of the way so the OOA diver can grab it. I was assisting as a safety diver with a BSAC instructor and he asked me to do an OOA drill with one of his students. I was signaling and expecting her to detach her octo from her BCD and offer it to me by hand, instead she just spread her arms and jutted the side of her body with the octo attached in my direction....because I had not trained with a BSAC group before, I was unaware that they taught this skill differently and had to put my own reg back in my mouth as I was running out of bubbles to blow waiting on the other diver to something that was not going to happen.

I posted about the above scenario here a few years ago when it happened. It stressed the importance of doing a thorough dive brief/buddy check where hand signals and protocols are discussed and agreed upon, as you might not be splashing with someone trained the same way you were.

-Z

 

[boulderjohn]

I have been diving since 1983. In my lifetime I have personally seen 3 out of air divers where I was in a position to donate.

Not a single diver grabbed the regulator out of my mouth.

I have only been in the vicinity of one OOA incident in my life. In that case, a woman evidently had not switched her tank over for a second dive, because she was OOA very early in the dive after having shown good breathing skills prior to that. Her husband was her buddy, and she reached for and took his alternate, and they did a controlled ascent with no issues.

After that incident, I returned to my shop and polled the dozen instructors who worked there. Had they ever seen or participated in an OOA incident, and, if so, what happened? Only a handful of incidents were reported, and in 100% of the cases, the OOA diver went for the alternate.

When I started technical training, I learned to use a long hose and bungeed alternate, but for a while I left my recreational career in a conventional format. Then I read about a drowning in (IIRC) the Netherlands in which an OOA dier went for her buddy's alternate, but it had come loose from its holder and was stuck behind him. She drowned as she persisted in trying to get to that alternate. I switched my recreational gear over because of that.

I read somewhere (can;t remember where) that some study said that an OOA diver is most likely to try to do as trained.

I think almost anything can happen with a panicked OOW diver, but I believe the most likely scenario is that the OOA diver will head directly for the alternate.

 

[Sevenrider860]

As long as you know nothing nor bring in any real-world experience then the PADI course assessment questions are fine and dandy.

However, if you treat the presence of someone else’s "sticker" as meaning the gas HAS NOT been analysed, tear that tape off and analyse the contents yourself writing your own sticker with gas contents to one decimal place, the date, and optionally MOD then you will probably fail the test.

Not least because the gas contents could have changed as the gasses homogenise if the cylinder has been left for a while.

When I fill a customer’s cylinder with Nitrox you will find a sticker that has my analysis after it was filled. I put the date, the pressure, and the analyzed O2 percentage.

Let’s say my analysis sticker shows 36%. Your analysis shows 28%. Per the OP, you ignore the fact that the blender measured this at 36% and mark the MOD for 28% and move on with diving that cylinder.

In real life, if I get a tank where the blender shows 36% and my analysis shows 28%, I want to know who screwed up. I would analyze again, likely using a different analyzer. I am comparing my analysis to what is marked by the blender. I trust my analysis, but when I see that our values are not even close, I will check again to be sure and see if there is some other variable throwing the comparison off.

There are places that don’t label the contents of the cylinders. I frequent a few in Florida. I also know what to expect. It is like an unwritten contents label that I am comparing my analysis to.

I don’t think the question is as wrong as the OP seems to imply and I think the vast majority of experienced divers would answer the question correctly even without reading the course material.

If you are expecting X (either based on a marking or on an assumption) aren’t we comparing our analysis results versus our expected content before we mark the MOD?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I have only been in the vicinity of one OOA incident in my life. In that case, a woman evidently had not switched her tank over for a second dive, because she was OOA very early in the dive after having shown good breathing skills prior to that. Her husband was her buddy, and she reached for and took his alternate, and they did a controlled ascent with no issues.

After that incident, I returned to my shop and polled the dozen instructors who worked there. Had they ever seen or participated in an OOA incident, and, if so, what happened? Only a handful of incidents were reported, and in 100% of the cases, the OOA diver went for the alternate.

When I started technical training, I learned to use a long hose and bungeed alternate, but for a while I left my recreational career in a conventional format. Then I read about a drowning in (IIRC) the Netherlands in which an OOA dier went for her buddy's alternate, but it had come loose from its holder and was stuck behind him. She drowned as she persisted in trying to get to that alternate. I switched my recreational gear over because of that.

I read somewhere (can;t remember where) that some study said that an OOA diver is most likely to try to do as trained.

I think almost anything can happen with a panicked OOW diver, but I believe the most likely scenario is that the OOA diver will head directly for the alternate.

The one thing that concerns me about donating the primary is like you said, the OOA diver will go for the regulator that they are trained to take. If the primary is the one they take then for a few seconds both divers are trading around regs, both are in transition. Is it always the OOA diver that stresses out during an OOA event, or is it possible the donator get stressed too? OK, so the secondary is right there under the chin. What if it isn’t? What if the bungee came loose or the mouthpiece ripped or a handful of other things that can happen to a dormant reg? So we know the primary is working but what about the bungeed second? 100% sure?
If the OOA diver has been OOA for any length of time then that would be when the reg ripping-out-of-the-mouth starts to happen. If the donator is not ready for it, lets say they are taking a good inhale and a diver comes out of nowhere and rips the reg out, it’s possible that the donator will get water in their windpipe and choke. Anything could happen really. I almost think @Angelo Farina is right about the donator keeping his reg in his mouth, staying in control, and offering the alternate. Also the alternate needs to be set up properly and not difficult to deploy or find.
I have been running a Hog/primary donate for years but have been thinking a lot about this lately.

 

[Zef]

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that affects viz worse than overweighted open water students taught in a silty location.

My wife and daughters did their checkout dives in an old chalk quarry in southwest Belgium 7 minutes from out house. The silt was such that it would be stirred up just by looking at it. Because it was so close, it was an easy and frequent place to dive. In all the times I dived there, I think there was just only one early morning dive where me and a fellow club member were the first ones in and the visibility was pristine...all the other times it was just billowing clouds of very fine chalk silt due to newbies crawling on the bottom or flutter kicking.

-Z

 

[Wibble]

I have only been in the vicinity of one OOA incident in my life. In that case, a woman evidently had not switched her tank over for a second dive, because she was OOA very early in the dive after having shown good breathing skills prior to that. Her husband was her buddy, and she reached for and took his alternate, and they did a controlled ascent with no issues.

After that incident, I returned to my shop and polled the dozen instructors who worked there. Had they ever seen or participated in an OOA incident, and, if so, what happened? Only a handful of incidents were reported, and in 100% of the cases, the OOA diver went for the alternate.

When I started technical training, I learned to use a long hose and bungeed alternate, but for a while I left my recreational career in a conventional format. Then I read about a drowning in (IIRC) the Netherlands in which an OOA dier went for her buddy's alternate, but it had come loose from its holder and was stuck behind him. She drowned as she persisted in trying to get to that alternate. I switched my recreational gear over because of that.

I read somewhere (can;t remember where) that some study said that an OOA diver is most likely to try to do as trained.

I think almost anything can happen with a panicked OOW diver, but I believe the most likely scenario is that the OOA diver will head directly for the alternate.

When I started diving — late in life, ten years ago — I found the whole main regulator and "octopus" utterly awful. It’s so poor that you’re even taught to sweep back with your arm to recover your regulator from behind your back. The octopus would be folded over and shoved in a D-ring and you regularly saw them dangling in front of divers. Sub-optimal to say the least.

When I moved to a longhose and bungeed necklaced backup 18 months later it was so logical. Donation is far safer and trivially simple in an out-of-gas situation. The necklace so easy to reach down and scoop into your mouth.

Why the industry persists with the awful main and octopus a mystery.

 

[Subcooled]

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that affects viz worse than overweighted open water students taught in a silty location.

Yes. The bottom is indeed a very important factor - especially with the bicycle kick...

 

[Graeme Fraser]

I've noticed a couple of PADI exam / knowledge review questions in OW and PADI Tec where the question and answer have obviously been converted from imperial to metric, but either rounding up or down has resulted in discrepancies.

Can't remember the exact one, but there's a emergency ascent question that says something like OOA, buddy too far and 10m, do a CESA. However, the manual says 9m and above do a CESA, but below that a buoyant ascent. Again, probably a rounding issue.

 

[VikingDives]

I read somewhere (can;t remember where) that some study said that an OOA diver is most likely to try to do as trained.

I think almost anything can happen with a panicked OOW diver, but I believe the most likely scenario is that the OOA diver will head directly for the alternate.

When I was doing the confined water portion of my IE, my buddy for the OOA demonstration was a candidate who'd been taught by another course director. There were five people in that group, and I noticed that all of them were donating the primary to their buddy.

When it became our turn, he signaled out of air, I raised my arm so he could grab my octo and he froze. I could tell by his look of confusion and panic that he had never encountered this scenario before. I ended up donating by grabbing my octo and handing it to him.

Long story short, he passed his IE and is an instructor out there somewhere. . .

 

[Wibble]

When I was doing the confined water portion of my IE, my buddy for the OOA demonstration was a candidate who'd been taught by another course director. There were five people in that group, and I noticed that all of them were donating the primary to their buddy.

When it became our turn, he signaled out of air, I raised my arm so he could grab my octo and he froze. I could tell by his look of confusion and panic that he had never encountered this scenario before. I ended up donating by grabbing my octo and handing it to him.

Long story short, he passed his IE and is an instructor out there somewhere. . .

Shouldn't you actively help someone who's out of gas? (not saying you personally!)

Genuinely; if someone's signalling they're OOG, there's only seconds to prevent them from drowning. The whole "make like a starfish" so they can grab the auxiliary is just mad.

This is why the longhose is so effective: grab it from your mouth and shove it in their face: done. You know where your necklaced backup is and you breathe. Everyone lives.