JDMerk
Contributor
Put Another Dollar In it?
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PADI OW Sidemount Diver
- Thread starter ianr33
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FIXXERVI6
Contributor
I just took this course from Jeff Loflin.
While I can't say I like Padi all that much, I can tell you I learned.
I had a handfull of sidemount dives in before I took the class, they were "learning on my own" dives and while I had made possitive changes in the setup I was FAR from having it where I needed it to be.
After the class I can not tell you everything is now perfect, I need to make some more adjustments but what is most important is how much time I cut off of "making it work on my own" and in combination with that, walking away knowing what else I need to change to finish dialing this in.
Regardless of the agency I would have happily paid Jeff for his time with no card being involved, I pay to learn and I did.
Now with that said I think its all back to what a lot of people say, its in the instructor not the agency, I would recommned the PADI sidemount course from Jeff for anyone looking to do it, I have technical certificaitons but I did go home with plenty of take home value from a Padi side mount course.
With that said people need to research their instructor, is their instructor the type that went in one weekend and did 20 bounce dives below 100 feet to meet the minimum requirement to teach padi deep diver course? (I dunno what the requirements are but you get the idea) or is the instructor someone thats been around the block a couple of times?
Just throwing that out there as my recent experience with a PADI side mount class.
While I can't say I like Padi all that much, I can tell you I learned.
I had a handfull of sidemount dives in before I took the class, they were "learning on my own" dives and while I had made possitive changes in the setup I was FAR from having it where I needed it to be.
After the class I can not tell you everything is now perfect, I need to make some more adjustments but what is most important is how much time I cut off of "making it work on my own" and in combination with that, walking away knowing what else I need to change to finish dialing this in.
Regardless of the agency I would have happily paid Jeff for his time with no card being involved, I pay to learn and I did.
Now with that said I think its all back to what a lot of people say, its in the instructor not the agency, I would recommned the PADI sidemount course from Jeff for anyone looking to do it, I have technical certificaitons but I did go home with plenty of take home value from a Padi side mount course.
With that said people need to research their instructor, is their instructor the type that went in one weekend and did 20 bounce dives below 100 feet to meet the minimum requirement to teach padi deep diver course? (I dunno what the requirements are but you get the idea) or is the instructor someone thats been around the block a couple of times?
Just throwing that out there as my recent experience with a PADI side mount class.
Would be interested to hear some of the specifics you learned. Based on hearing Jeff praise SM over several years, 3 of us recently acquired Nomads, and are starting the same way you did -'making it work on my own', prior to doing the SM course with Jeff later this spring.
In the case of this course and this instructor, it is a bit more challenging than usual to distinguish agency from instructor, as Jeff developed the SM course as a distinctive specialty for PADI, as I understand it. Glad to hear you had such a good experience. Jeff is a great guy to work with, and we are looking forward to doing SM with him.
FIXXERVI6
Contributor
Well, in my opinion screw learning it on your own its a lot easier and faster to take it from someone thats been there done that! Part of my problem is I had to go in with an open mind because some of the methods he was teaching I was like - I dunno about that I don't really like the sound of that, but I went with it and in the end I was like OHH ok I get it now that works great.
History
Hoses and hose routing
Different tanks
Floating on the surface
Cam Band setup methods
Scenerio's (like you want redundancy, or you want doubles in a place you can't get them etc etc)
Weighting/trim
In water tank don
Boat/surface rig up then go do giant stride entry
out of air drills along with stuffing the long hose back when you were done
How to make your width profile smaller while swimming, two methods
The course did cover bouancy, kicking methods etc but pretty much everyone had that down already, there were a few of us, myself included that had swimming backward problems, I can do it when I dive went I can't do it dry so I need to practice that more it drives me nuts.
Valve drills
gas management - non technical gas management, more about the "now you have to independent supplies so you gotta blah blah" everyone had that down already.
I"m sure there were other things but I've slept since then, it was a full day (two day course but most of the information dump was day 1, day 2 was testing our adjustments from day 1 more drills etc) even with some things being touched on quickly because everyone got it quickly.
Everyone in my class was at least familiar with concepts gas management, all that good jazz, he did say with a class of people that came with less knowledge the classes would be longer, and he has ran them from sun up to sun down before - which is good in my opinion, the point is to learn.
Extras discussed because of QA, we asked about it but was not part of the normal course.
Argon bottle rigging
Stage rigging
We did go over light and backup lights not sure if that was extra or not
Little things like getting to your drysuit pockets
I dont' remember what else, there was lots of QA going on.
The biggest take home from me is my "dialing it in" time went from what would have been several months to for the most part a weekend. Its a lot more fun diving a rig than trying to figure it out in my opinion.
History
Hoses and hose routing
Different tanks
Floating on the surface
Cam Band setup methods
Scenerio's (like you want redundancy, or you want doubles in a place you can't get them etc etc)
Weighting/trim
In water tank don
Boat/surface rig up then go do giant stride entry
out of air drills along with stuffing the long hose back when you were done
How to make your width profile smaller while swimming, two methods
The course did cover bouancy, kicking methods etc but pretty much everyone had that down already, there were a few of us, myself included that had swimming backward problems, I can do it when I dive went I can't do it dry so I need to practice that more it drives me nuts.
Valve drills
gas management - non technical gas management, more about the "now you have to independent supplies so you gotta blah blah" everyone had that down already.
I"m sure there were other things but I've slept since then, it was a full day (two day course but most of the information dump was day 1, day 2 was testing our adjustments from day 1 more drills etc) even with some things being touched on quickly because everyone got it quickly.
Everyone in my class was at least familiar with concepts gas management, all that good jazz, he did say with a class of people that came with less knowledge the classes would be longer, and he has ran them from sun up to sun down before - which is good in my opinion, the point is to learn.
Extras discussed because of QA, we asked about it but was not part of the normal course.
Argon bottle rigging
Stage rigging
We did go over light and backup lights not sure if that was extra or not
Little things like getting to your drysuit pockets
I dont' remember what else, there was lots of QA going on.
The biggest take home from me is my "dialing it in" time went from what would have been several months to for the most part a weekend. Its a lot more fun diving a rig than trying to figure it out in my opinion.
RickHeil
Registered
FIXXERVI6, I'm curious to learn what you think about side mount diving? What type of diving are you doing? Do you still dive backmount, doubles and/or singles, if so when? and so on.... I'm seriously considering taking a sidemount class, since I like the idea the more I look at it. When is it good, better, or a poorer configuration than other choices. One thing I'm more focused on is finding patterns and applying them consistently... one of my hopes is sidemount might allow me to bridge the back and forth from doubles to rec configs and ahve a more common yet flexible config. Thanks in advance for your insight...
FIXXERVI6
Contributor
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