Struggling in midwater

[deepblueme]

So if everyone wears a wrist mount gauge then why all the "with out visual reference"?

Looking at a gauge reading 65ft is the same as looking at a fan coral or knot in a rope at 65ft or 15ft. Is it not?

Alot of my students never put the gauge/visual reference together when doing floating saftey stops.

Sorry if I offended any of the techie divers out there.

 

[dsteding]

So if everyone wears a wrist mount gauge then why all the "with out visual reference"?

Looking at a gauge reading 65ft is the same as looking at a fan coral or knot in a rope at 65ft or 15ft. Is it not?.

You are correct, I think one of the upshots of our dual threads is more attention to gauges, This is indeed great advice. But, I think there is a bit of a difference in regards to looking at a gauge and having a true visual reference, one can be processed directly by the brain (i.e., see knot in line going up, you have the visual reference to know you are falling) versus a gauge (see number change, what does that mean . . . but I don't FEEL like I am going up or down . . . I must be, so I should correct accordingly). That being said, bringing the gauge thing back into play is a good point.

Sorry if I offended any of the techie divers out there.

I'm sorry if my post re wearing gauges was taken as me being offended, it was more along the lines of orienting you to the gear configuration so we could move past that and get some more advice. No offense taken, I hope none was taken on your side of things.

-Doug

 

[ClayJar]

Looking at a gauge reading 65ft is the same as looking at a fan coral or knot in a rope at 65ft or 15ft. Is it not?

With a nearby fixed visual reference, I can tell when I'm moving even very slightly. Ascending along a fairly steady line, I dare say that a change of even an inch or two is easily measurable. By contrast, my digital depth gauge measures in feet, and my plain old mechanical depth gauge is no more precise.

When you're on a shallow stop, a change of one foot may be a significant change in depth, buoyancy-wise.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Hmmmmm -- (Too) Many years ago when I was learning to fly on Instruments I was forced to rely only on the instruments to keep the plane going the way I wanted -- up, down, level and/or turning. You very quickly learned you could NOT rely on your ears, your butt -- anything except the instruments.

What you are writing about with mid-water orientation is "swimming on instruments" because you really can't trust your natural senses. In flying IFR you are taught to always scan -- altitude, attitude, speed, direction -- altitude, attitude, speed, direction -- and so on. I suppose it is the same here -- get a "scan" and keep it -- buddy, depth, task, direction -- buddy, depth, task, direction and so on. And when you were thrown a new task (radio call, approach plate, calculating fuel, whatever) you had to be VERY careful about fixating on the new task -- everything had to be slowed down.

Simple to write -- hellishly hard to do -- BUT, as with flying, if you fixate on one, the others go to h*ll very quickly.

It's not the same thing.

In a plane, you can't trust your senses because of the effects of centrifical force. You could feel like you are in straight and level flight when you aren't. When diving centrifical force isn't an issue. We don't have to make standard rate turns either. LOL

One thing thing that is similar though, is in flying they have the saying aviate, navigate and then communicate to set priorities. In diving it's similar in that we have to dive first.

 

[ArcticDiver]

It's not the same thing.

In a plane, you can't trust your senses because of the effects of centrifical force. You could feel like you are in straight and level flight when you aren't. When diving centrifical force isn't an issue. We don't have to make standard rate turns either. LOL

One thing thing that is similar though, is in flying they have the saying aviate, navigate and then communicate to set priorities. In diving it's similar in that we have to dive first.

Gee with two similar threads going I guess I posted my summary in the "wrong" one. Oh well, if anyone is interested they'll look at both, I guess.

To this post:
To the contrary Mike. It is exactly the same thing. Centrifigal force is but one of the influences affecting a person's ability to rely on their senses. We teach pilots to rely on their instruments because the fact is they are more reliable than humans in measuring their surroundings and providing consistent information. We use multiple instruments because we know that even though they are more reliable than humans they still can fail and we don't want to suffer the consequences of that failure.

The factors in aviation and scuba affecting a person's ability to sense their surroundings when there are no, or minimal visual clues, are extremely similar.

So, as I posted in the other thread, the two things that make the most sense is to >fly your instruments and >practice, practice, practice.

I appreciate this thread because it affirms that I'm not the only person having to work on this and that the methodology I thought was best is, in fact, the way to go.

 

[deepblueme]

So then it is a spacial (sp) awareness thing then than more of a visual thing.

I have been very lucky wiht this as I have never really had much of a problem with this, could be all the "braille" dives I did back in the ponds of Missouri as a guppy.

 

[Thalassamania]

When I first joined the SB we had some discussions of the orientation problems in Blue Water diving. I found them quite severe the first few times we went out. After a while, using a rig, I was able to better adapt because of the visual reference that it provided. I think that the long (20 meter) horizontal tether lines were much better for this than say, a knot in a vertical line that is a meter away.

I also have found that my watch can be set to beep at a given depth and this audio clue has been helpful in training, though I tend to rely on it as a crutch when I use it.

Re flying: Death spirals are not a big thing in diving.

 

[ArcticDiver]

So then it is a spacial (sp) awareness thing then than more of a visual thing.

I have been very lucky wiht this as I have never really had much of a problem with this, could be all the "braille" dives I did back in the ponds of Missouri as a guppy.

As any carpenter can tell you; given a visual reference and some experience a person can draw a straight line and measure pretty routinely within a 1/16th or so. But, without that visual reference for comparison purposes it becomes a crapshoot. Of course in carpentry there is seldom a situation where there isn't some kind of visual reference. Still the example is valid I believe.

But, put a person is a place where the visual references are minimal or missing and the brain quite literally looses touch with reality. That, I believe, psychiatrists/interrogators chime in here, is the basis for sensory deprivation methods.

So, personalizing, I just need to get someplace where I can dive enough to Do what I Know often enough to be proficient.

Hmmm...would anyone like to subsidize me moving South so I can perform this human experiment?:14:

 

[rjack321]

I found one thing really mucked with my mid-water skills...

Sunnto gauges have adjustable "update" rates. Default is 20 seconds - that can be way too long. By the time the depth number has changed you are now off your stop and you're continually "chasing the correct depth over compensating and such.

Setting the "refresh" or data rate to as short as possible is a big help.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Gee with two similar threads going I guess I posted my summary in the "wrong" one. Oh well, if anyone is interested they'll look at both, I guess.

To this post:
To the contrary Mike. It is exactly the same thing. Centrifigal force is but one of the influences affecting a person's ability to rely on their senses. We teach pilots to rely on their instruments because the fact is they are more reliable than humans in measuring their surroundings and providing consistent information. We use multiple instruments because we know that even though they are more reliable than humans they still can fail and we don't want to suffer the consequences of that failure.

The factors in aviation and scuba affecting a person's ability to sense their surroundings when there are no, or minimal visual clues, are extremely similar.

So, as I posted in the other thread, the two things that make the most sense is to >fly your instruments and >practice, practice, practice.

I appreciate this thread because it affirms that I'm not the only person having to work on this and that the methodology I thought was best is, in fact, the way to go.

I have to back off the debate there because I'm not a pilot.

Diving is different though and I don't even own an attitude indicator. We can't always use our gauge and we need to be prepared for that.