SCUBA shop that will issue be an AOW card after a few days diving?
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AOW teaches exactly zero useful skills
My experience differs; but we have two very different starting points, and two very different "classes".
You have, or should have based upon your stated background, the necessary skills to simply obtain the certification.
I started with the OW class having had less than ten minutes using scuba equipment, and that was in the pool on a vacation in Mexico. I spent a week doing the OW course with my instructor, and the next week diving with him.
After 27 dives, I came away feeling that I had some of the basics down, but needed a lot more time diving, and more instruction/coaching before I was anywhere near self-sufficient.
A year later, I did the AOW course with the same instructor, and spent the balance of that two weeks diving with him. I came away from that vacation a better diver.
You got what you needed out of the class - AOW certification/card. I got what I needed out of my classes, a reasonable level of competency - and a whole lot of fun.
OMyMyOHellYes
Contributor
It seems that that was exactly what you were seeking - pay money, get a cert card, not actual training for an experienced diver. AOW does have value for the diver just coming out of OW with a total of 4 quick descents to demonstrate skills but no real dive exposure. The buoyancy portion was particularly useful for me as what I got in the 1-1/2 day OW cram-jam cert was greatly deficient.
There is NOTHING ADVANCED about AOW. It is part two of OW certification and should be labeled as such. All it is intended to do is give newly certified (not even lightly experienced) divers a slight bit of "get comfortable underwater" experience and some very slight exposure to stuff that is not covered in the kindergarten-level OW cert course.
As you said elsewhere, full OW should just encompass the 5 "adventure dives" that make one an "advanced" diver. If they wanted to keep the two separate there would be "OW-restricted" and OW-Full" and avoid a lot of the confusion surrounding the term "advanced".
Compared to getting a pilot license, OW is like getting signed off to solo: the student can take off, land, recognize and recover from stalls, perform basic emergency procedures, and navigate around a small, closed rectangular course. That's it, I would expect 7-15 hours of instruction. Not a full pilot until achieving private pilot license - more dual instruction and more varied experience: night flight, heavier cross-wind TO and LND conditions, dead reckoning navigation over longer distance, weight and balance calculations, radio navigation, more comprehensive radio procedures, WX/meteroology, more advanced emergency procedure training and practice.
A good instructor will make it a point to assess your skills and knowledge, and fill in any gaps. Don't assume you are proficient or an expert.
A crappy instructor will just issue you a card, validating your displeasure in the training system...
A crappy instructor will just issue you a card, validating your displeasure in the training system...
Bob DBF
Contributor
And yet both RSTC and ISO standards require that an OW Diver is trained to be an autonomous Diver before they are given the certification. Is someone allowing the scuba agencies to ignore the standards?
Wow! I haven't seen that old myth in years!
Back in the mid-1960s, the Los Angeles County program was concerned that too many divers were quitting diving soon after their OW certification. They decided to add a new certification, a course that would introduce divers to a variety of different kinds of dive experiences in the hope that something would pique the interest of divers. NAUI, which had been formed from Los Angeles County's program a few years before that, followed suit for the same reason--introduce divers to a variety of dive experiences.
PADI had nothing to do with the creation of the AOW course.
At about that same time, NAUI was in serious financial trouble, and they decided to cut back on nation-wide efforts and focus on California only. Accordingly, they canceled a major instructor training program scheduled for Chicago. The Chicago branch of NAUI, now cut off from the organization, formed a new agency--PADI. PADI was thus born from NAUI and adopted the NAUI program. The only real change they made initially was focusing their student acquisition efforts on the sporting goods shops selling scuba gear rather than on university physical education courses.
let us not cloud this discussion with facts....
@boulderjohn
Well you recapped what happened in US.
US is not the world.
Scuba training started here in Europe almost 10 years before in US, after Luigi Ferraro organised the first certification courses in 1947. Soon followed by his friend Cousteau in France. When Padi landed in Europe at the end of the seventies, scuba instruction here was very well established for decades. They had to propose something new, and their marketing idea was to split the content of our classical first course in two parts. This is how Padi publicised their novel (for us) "diving is fun" approach, a quick and easy introductory course feasible by everyone, to be followed by a second almost mandatory part, the AOW, for becoming equivalent in proficiency to normal european novice divers.
It was a big commercial success for PADI!
The other for profit agencies (NAUI, etc.) arrived a few years later.
So for us it was PADI introducing a two-parts course for novices, called OW and AOW.
It must be noted that PADI hired existing CMAS instructors when landing here, and did ask them explicitly to NOT provide the complete training at OW, yielding back knowledge and skills to be sold during the second AOW course. Same for specialties, of course!
Well you recapped what happened in US.
US is not the world.
Scuba training started here in Europe almost 10 years before in US, after Luigi Ferraro organised the first certification courses in 1947. Soon followed by his friend Cousteau in France. When Padi landed in Europe at the end of the seventies, scuba instruction here was very well established for decades. They had to propose something new, and their marketing idea was to split the content of our classical first course in two parts. This is how Padi publicised their novel (for us) "diving is fun" approach, a quick and easy introductory course feasible by everyone, to be followed by a second almost mandatory part, the AOW, for becoming equivalent in proficiency to normal european novice divers.
It was a big commercial success for PADI!
The other for profit agencies (NAUI, etc.) arrived a few years later.
So for us it was PADI introducing a two-parts course for novices, called OW and AOW.
It must be noted that PADI hired existing CMAS instructors when landing here, and did ask them explicitly to NOT provide the complete training at OW, yielding back knowledge and skills to be sold during the second AOW course. Same for specialties, of course!
Still Kicking
Contributor
The LA County Advanced Diver Program goes far beyond the other agency advanced classes. Topics covered include:
Oceanography & Forecasting Ideal Diving Conditions
Navigation
Rescue
Physics
Physiology
Physical Fitness & Nutrition
Diving equipment
Medical aspects of diving
Marine life ID
Dive planning
Dive tables & computers
Basic decompression theory concepts
Skin & Free Diving
Altitude diving
Freshwater diving
Night diving
Search and recovery
Shore based & boat-based diving.
Introduction to Technical diving
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