Shop and many instructor's mindsets.
Question Teaching OW with backplate and wing from the very beginning ?
- Thread starter Roger Hobden
- Start date
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Shop and many instructor's mindsets.
Bob DBF
Contributor
Probably not dropped intentionally.
I found one with 10# or so in it on the bottom swimming back to the liveaboard I was on. Seeing it hadn't been in the water long, I went around to everyone on the boat to find the owner. The next morning a diver came to me and asked me sheepishly if I still had it. The previous day he said he had a buoyancy issue which he resolved, but couldn't get his trim right and kept rolling to one side. It didn't dawn on him that he had lost weight since he didn't hurtle to the surface. He was getting his rig ready to dive when he noticed the weight pocket gone. I suggested he empty that pocket and put in half the weight from the other pocket, and try diving that.
We spent some time on the last two days of the trip, talking about weight, buoyancy, and trim. From my understanding, no one in OW, or on the shop dives he went on, ever took an intrest in his weighting, since he could dive. And from what I saw, he wasn't a bad diver for around 20 dives.
Do any of the certifying agencies other than GUE, now offer a course in BP/W as a kind of standalone course, or give a student the option at OW level? I switched to BP after about 3 years of diving a Seaquest Balance, then Zeagle Ranger, because I was looking for a more streamlined rig. But I didn't learn about BP/W from an instructor, but through my own research. I just had to invest the money and try it out asmy LDS looked at me like I was a two headed alien when I first asked them about it. That was 20 years ago, and now they sell BP/W rigs, so I guess maybe it's more prevalent now?
I can only speak for my agency (PADI) with assurance, but I have never heard of anything different from any other agency. There is no restriction whatsoever on what kind of BCD can be used for the OW class. Tomorrow I will do the first OW certification dives for my granddaughter, who did her pool sessions with a diver operator in her area. The class was done with BP/W, and that is what she rented from them for her OW dives.
That said, it is pretty rare. I recommended that shop to her for that reason, and I don't know of another shop in the state that does it.
About 10 years ago, a shop owner quoted industry statistics indicating that BP/Ws accounted for less than 1% of total BCD sales in the USA. That percentage has certainly grown since then, but that still means a whole lot of shops not only do not stock BP/Ws, it is possible they do not have an employee who has ever seen one.
When I was teaching for a shop in Boulder, I taught all classes, including tech. With me teaching tech, you can be sure it was possible to order a BP/W, but there was not a single one in stock, not even a display model. That is because the owner was terrified of the prospect of unsold inventory, and he was convinced no one but tech students would buy one. The supplier (Hollis) took weeks or months to fill such orders, so my students ordered online instead. The owner faulted me for this, telling me that the tech gear sales I had promised were not happening.
I don't see why you would need a course. And the agencies just consider it to be another BCD so there's no problem with using it in an OW course.
The problem has always been the shops, or more properly, the mainline manufacturers that provide the gear that the shops sell. A BP/W is a commodity item which makes it hard to justify the large margins needed for the traditional retail sales model.
You didn't just steal a stop sign from a relatively innocuous intersection and shape it yourself back then? (Kidding)
No one offers a course about diving in a BP/W.
May I ask why the question?
An LDS near me (S NJ) starts everyone on a BP&W (Hollis) , but they do have normal jacket BCDs if people want them.
I'm a NAUI instructor and I can teach in any type of currently available bc's without any need for special class or permission, jacket or bpw.
20 years ago it was a different world out there.
Just curiosity on my part. I know there are alot of instructors on SB, so I just wondered if the big agencies were offering BP/W as a "specialty" or something.
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