Status of GUE OW Certification Course

[Charlie99]

Does anybody know when GUE will start training new divers?

After some tangents in another thread I got to wondering what GUE will teach new divers for decompression planning.

Has anybody seen the OW (or whatever GUE has decided to call their initial certification course) training material and can say whether they teach depth averaging / ratio deco / deco on the fly from the beginning?

TIA,

Charlie Allen

 

[Adobo]

Does anybody know when GUE will start training new divers?

After some tangents in another thread I got to wondering what GUE will teach new divers for decompression planning.

Has anybody seen the OW (or whatever GUE has decided to call their initial certification course) training material and can say whether they teach depth averaging / ratio deco / deco on the fly from the beginning?

TIA,

Charlie Allen

Charlie,

I have no personal knowledge as to the status or content of GUE's Open Water class. However, I would like to mention that there was no explicit mention of ratio deco / deco on the fly in my fundies class. We did talk about min deco and ascent profiles (1 minute stops).

I doubt that material more advanced than what is covered in fundies will be offered in open water.

 

[PerroneFord]

I posed that question to Jarrod the other week during a radio interview. Didn't give any specifics. I have not contacted him personally, as he is pretty busy and I'm sure something public will be announced when something is known. I'll ask when I'm in high springs this weekend and see if anyone knows more. I'm very curious about it myself.

 

[jeckyll]

*Speculation only*

Given that they don't teach ratio deco in fundies I would be surprised if it was contained in the OW material.



We talked a little about this program (in wide generalities only) with Dan Mackay during fundies last week. I did not get the sense that deco would be included from that discussion.

 

[Charlie99]

I assume that SOME sort of decompression training would be included -- even it it were simple tables with or w/o depth averaging. Unlike DIR-F, where the general underlying instruction is "follow the guidelines of your OW certifying agency", for a GUE initial certification class, some sort of basic dive planning would need to be taught.


I'm sure there will also be more extensive gas planning training than is in other OW certification classes.

The OW class manual, titled "Immersed" IIRC, should be an excellent resource. My last contact with GUE regarding this was after reading some quotations in a late 2005 newsletter from Extreme Exposure. Back in late 2005/early 2006 the word from GUE HQ was that the course book was going to be released around Feb/March 2006. Obviously, it has been delayed a bit.

 

[SkullDeformity]

My fundies instructor had on his laptop material and powerpoints that he said were being sent around to GUE instructors for everyone to look at. That was probably about 6 months ago?

 

[TSandM]

I wouldn't say that Fundies taught "follow your certifying agency". We were not given MDL tables in Fundies, although we WERE given them in Joe Talavera's Essentials and Rec 2 classes. But in Fundies, we WERE taught "minimum deco", which is pause at 75% max depth, hard 1 minute stops beginning at 50% max depth. I am assuming that is what they will teach OW divers, since the OW class is said to include Fundies.

I don't know whether they will teach any depth averaging techniques, or whether one will be expected to use the table approach of max depth is what determines time. We haven't gone into that in either class I've taken so far.

 

[amascuba]

My fundies instructor talked a little bit about the GUE OW course a few weeks ago. He mentioned that the course will be the equivalent of an OW, AOW, Nitrox, and Rescue with the GUE twist. I forgot exactly how long he said the class was expected to last. (somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 - 15 weeks). The expected course cost will be in the neighborhood of $1500. He also said that at this point in time the OW course is on the back burner while they get their other courses straightened out, like the fundies course material for instance.

If you look at the GUE course standards for the OW class; You can take the OW class and go straight to cave 1 or tech 1 after a 100 dives. Based on this, I would assume (A S S*U*ME??) that GUE would teach minimum deco with depth averaging. This is speculation though.

I also ran across this recently. Apparently GUE hosted an OW workshop last year during their conference.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/dnicholek/album/576460762320081298

 

[jeckyll]

...He also said that at this point in time the OW course is on the back burner while they get their other courses straightened out, like the fundies course material for instance.
...

From what I understood, we took the "new" new fundies last week. So I believe that's course update is completed.

Bjorn

 

[amascuba]

From what I understood, we took the "new" new fundies last week. So I believe that's course update is completed.

Bjorn

I took the "new" fundies class a couple weeks ago. Did you get the workbook? It's unreleased on the GUE website.