Tech1: Ascent Drills

[rjack321]

Oh, and for practice, the team taking tech1 needs to be able to drop down to 10 fsw without a close reference (e.g. in 30-40 fsw of water with no line) and do valve drills and s-drills as a team with +/- 3 fsw buoyancy swings, trim to +/- 20 degrees and get it done quickly. There is a definite discontinuity in the requirements for DIRF-Tech and where you need to be for Tech1, since the DIRF-Tech pass is valve drills + s-drills near the bottom in trim and with good buoyancy, but with no time constraints. Bob also wanted to see good team communication on trim (fix your buddies bad trim in real-time) and buoyancy, with light signals. And its amazing how you can think you're signaling really expressively and on the video it doesn't look like much at all...

Yeah we had to do that in class but that was considered "our dive". No supervision, or time limit, etc. just 2 teams of 2 doing valve and s-drills midwater at 20ft (might have been 10??). I think all my GUE classes were easier than the wringer they put students through nowadays.

 

[rjack321]

Oh, I think I'm going to start highly recommending double-hp100s (or lp80/lp85s) over double-130s/104s for Tech1. And if you must use double-130s to keep fill pressures in the 2500-3000 psi range and take off some lead. I had a horrible dive after a 3500 psi fill which improved on the next dive just starting with 3000 psi and dropping 3# of lead. Dynamic instability is not your friend.

Yeah I did 2 honest tech1 dives down in SoCal last weekend using hp100s and an AL80 bottom stage. I don't think I could have done that starting out, and probably not in deep dark, scary Lake WA. But its an option down the road if you desire 2 tech1 dives a day. Really the bottom stage works better for me to be able to do a 50-80ft recreational dive after a Tech1 dive though.

I dove my hp100s first time in awhile yesterday with 32% in them. Dang that is heavy. I was like a brick with 3000psi in them. Took alot of gas just to get neutral. I'm definately not diving hp130s with 32%, ugh.

 

[boomx5]

I dove my hp100s first time in awhile yesterday with 32% in them. Dang that is heavy. I was like a brick with 3000psi in them. Took alot of gas just to get neutral. I'm definately not diving hp130s with 32%, ugh.

It's pretty funny how much lighter a stage with mix is than a stage with Nitrox is. It definately takes a bit more gas on the left side of the wing.

 

[TSandM]

Steve told me the other day that GUE isn't doing maskless ascents any more. They decided that you have to do mask-off swimming for comfort purposes, but the likelihood of the whole team losing masks and somebody having to do an ascent without one was low enough that they aren't requiring that. (Andrew still has you do it, but even he admits it's more as a water-comfort exercise.)

I still think it's a good thing to practice, though.

 

[lamont]

Steve told me the other day that GUE isn't doing maskless ascents any more. They decided that you have to do mask-off swimming for comfort purposes, but the likelihood of the whole team losing masks and somebody having to do an ascent without one was low enough that they aren't requiring that. (Andrew still has you do it, but even he admits it's more as a water-comfort exercise.)

I still think it's a good thing to practice, though.

Yep. Realistically everyone doing this kind of diving carries a spare mask. Losing 3 masks on a team of 2 or 4 masks on a team of 3 is unlikely.

Also agreed it is a good comfort-level trust-your-buddy excersize...