Roman K
Registered
As promised in one of the local threads I wanted to share my experience with the UTD Essentials course - hopefully some might find it useful =)
A quick intro - I consider myself a novice diver - SSI OW, PADI AOW and rescue + nitrox and wreck and about 50 logged dives over the last 1-1.5 years. I have switched to a BP/W and a long hose some 2-3 months back. I knew my trim wasn't great, my buoyancy had to be improved drastically and my propulsion was definitely not the most efficient one.
As I'm really interested in wreck diving and want to do it DIR way, choosing between GUE and UTD wasn't that difficult. All other factors apart, UTD training scheme did suit me better.
And so we begin - I have contacted Marine Owen - the local UTD instructor - and have agreed on a date that works for me. She was really flexible and have just agreed to the dates I've proposed (which was the only option for me to take the class). Convenient enough the course is held in Dubai as well which makes logistics quite easy...
Part 1: E-learning.
One thing that pulls me over UTD - it's their website... I'm not sure who manages it but they do need to hire a new web-admin. It's a disaster. While registering for the course was almost straight forward (apart from not being able to pay online as currency converters just don't work), the e-learning part wasn't that smooth.
The online presentations and pdf's seem to be a) outdated b) extremely high-level c) missing some parts of materials... Quizes are miss-placed and it wasn't that easy to align them to the learned materials. To cut it short - if I would to judge only on the e-experience I would join the UTD haters club. But I did have faith...
Part 2: The class.
The course is designed to run for 3 days. Marine believes that it's quite challenging for most of the students and runs it during 4 days - cudos for this and I've realised later how much did that help.
Day 1: We did cover a chunk of UTD basics and theory (in much more efficient way comparing to the e-learning), discussed the essentials of trim, weighting and propulsion. We worked on the equipment configurations in all details (2 students with single back-mounts and one side-mount).
Most of the day we've spent in the water without our gear (on a 7m hose) working on the trim and kicking technics. Must admit we all felt miserable most of the time (which means we did need the course indeed). Looking at our videos was quite a a good laugh - but we could see a drastic improvements from the first videos at the end of the day.
Day 2: The drills day...
After spending quite some time doing dry-runs of the Basic 6 - off we went in the water again, this time fully geared. Repeating previous day exercises was painful enough (at least for me) - I couldn't manage my trim at all with my legs dropping all the time. Apparently my jet-fins are too heavy (which was expected) to use without any exposure suits. Marine has offered to try the UTD neutrally buoyant fins and things have improved considerably. So we spent most of the days practicing and recording the drills and working on trim and buoyancy (back kick was always there on the agenda but that was a bit too much for us to handle at the moment).
Day 3:
After another set of theory (mini-deco, team work etc) we went back to the water to work on the skills. The day was pretty similar to the previous one and we had loads of time to practice. The great thing is that Marine got loads of gear available on hand so we could experiment and try different tweaks, configurations etc. I've finally realised that I need some weight on my shoulders and that made hell of a change on my trim and positioning.
By the end of the day we have worked on deploying the SMB apart from the other stuff - fun bit as well.
Day 4:
Yet another day in the water =) This time we have experimented on the buoyancy with the black-out mask, worked on rescuing the toxing diver and the ascent skills. Not to forget the trim, propulsion and the Basic 6...
Results: Well, comparing the videos day-on-day we could see a clear improvement, comparing the first day and the last one - felt like jumping from DSD to MSD... Considering the amount of time we have spend it the water I believe the 2 great things we've achieved were 1) actually the skills 2) knowledge on how to improve them further. It most certainly did help that it was a 4 days course and there was no pressure to fail it. At the end of the day I know that my trim is OK, I'm reasonably happy with my positioning (hey, I can do the Basic 6 not moving more than 0.5m) and buoyancy - and I know how to develop them further.
Conclusion: best course I've ever taken and best instructor I've ever met. Not to say the fun and laugh we had with other DM's/instructors stopping by. Extra brownies for having all the gear you can think of on hand (not to say the bungees and all these small useful things to make the kit perfect).
Would I recommend it - with no doubt!..
What's next? Log my 75th dive and go Tech 1 =)
A quick intro - I consider myself a novice diver - SSI OW, PADI AOW and rescue + nitrox and wreck and about 50 logged dives over the last 1-1.5 years. I have switched to a BP/W and a long hose some 2-3 months back. I knew my trim wasn't great, my buoyancy had to be improved drastically and my propulsion was definitely not the most efficient one.
As I'm really interested in wreck diving and want to do it DIR way, choosing between GUE and UTD wasn't that difficult. All other factors apart, UTD training scheme did suit me better.
And so we begin - I have contacted Marine Owen - the local UTD instructor - and have agreed on a date that works for me. She was really flexible and have just agreed to the dates I've proposed (which was the only option for me to take the class). Convenient enough the course is held in Dubai as well which makes logistics quite easy...
Part 1: E-learning.
One thing that pulls me over UTD - it's their website... I'm not sure who manages it but they do need to hire a new web-admin. It's a disaster. While registering for the course was almost straight forward (apart from not being able to pay online as currency converters just don't work), the e-learning part wasn't that smooth.
The online presentations and pdf's seem to be a) outdated b) extremely high-level c) missing some parts of materials... Quizes are miss-placed and it wasn't that easy to align them to the learned materials. To cut it short - if I would to judge only on the e-experience I would join the UTD haters club. But I did have faith...
Part 2: The class.
The course is designed to run for 3 days. Marine believes that it's quite challenging for most of the students and runs it during 4 days - cudos for this and I've realised later how much did that help.
Day 1: We did cover a chunk of UTD basics and theory (in much more efficient way comparing to the e-learning), discussed the essentials of trim, weighting and propulsion. We worked on the equipment configurations in all details (2 students with single back-mounts and one side-mount).
Most of the day we've spent in the water without our gear (on a 7m hose) working on the trim and kicking technics. Must admit we all felt miserable most of the time (which means we did need the course indeed). Looking at our videos was quite a a good laugh - but we could see a drastic improvements from the first videos at the end of the day.
Day 2: The drills day...
After spending quite some time doing dry-runs of the Basic 6 - off we went in the water again, this time fully geared. Repeating previous day exercises was painful enough (at least for me) - I couldn't manage my trim at all with my legs dropping all the time. Apparently my jet-fins are too heavy (which was expected) to use without any exposure suits. Marine has offered to try the UTD neutrally buoyant fins and things have improved considerably. So we spent most of the days practicing and recording the drills and working on trim and buoyancy (back kick was always there on the agenda but that was a bit too much for us to handle at the moment).
Day 3:
After another set of theory (mini-deco, team work etc) we went back to the water to work on the skills. The day was pretty similar to the previous one and we had loads of time to practice. The great thing is that Marine got loads of gear available on hand so we could experiment and try different tweaks, configurations etc. I've finally realised that I need some weight on my shoulders and that made hell of a change on my trim and positioning.
By the end of the day we have worked on deploying the SMB apart from the other stuff - fun bit as well.
Day 4:
Yet another day in the water =) This time we have experimented on the buoyancy with the black-out mask, worked on rescuing the toxing diver and the ascent skills. Not to forget the trim, propulsion and the Basic 6...
Results: Well, comparing the videos day-on-day we could see a clear improvement, comparing the first day and the last one - felt like jumping from DSD to MSD... Considering the amount of time we have spend it the water I believe the 2 great things we've achieved were 1) actually the skills 2) knowledge on how to improve them further. It most certainly did help that it was a 4 days course and there was no pressure to fail it. At the end of the day I know that my trim is OK, I'm reasonably happy with my positioning (hey, I can do the Basic 6 not moving more than 0.5m) and buoyancy - and I know how to develop them further.
Conclusion: best course I've ever taken and best instructor I've ever met. Not to say the fun and laugh we had with other DM's/instructors stopping by. Extra brownies for having all the gear you can think of on hand (not to say the bungees and all these small useful things to make the kit perfect).
Would I recommend it - with no doubt!..
What's next? Log my 75th dive and go Tech 1 =)
