Valve drills and light signals

[TSandM]

I know Steve feels strongly about that subject. One of the students in my husband's Fundies class was also a 4 or 5 on everything, but only got a rec pass because he let a teammate shut down all his own gas. On the other hand, my nerves in Cave 1 were so bad I screwed up valve drills TWICE, once putting a dead reg in my mouth, and although my buddies got chewed out for it, we all passed.

Of course, after the second day, I didn't make that mistake any more, either

 

[AndrewJD]

There seem to be two arguments in support of the practice in question. The first is that it is a task loading technique. I can accept that as a valid argument. The second is that it builds the muscle memory of shutting down a valve and signaling with a light. Presumably as a building block to failure management.

This argument is flawed because it assumes that signaling with your light is perfect communication with your team. Theoretically, that may be so, but in practice, there are infinite reasons why that is false. I.e, your team is single file in a blown out wreck/cave, you are in nice pretty tropical water where you decided you just didn't need the 35W light cannon or your 10W just doesn't cut it, or your buddy just isn't paying attention to your frantic light signal. We live in an imperfect world after all. So, to argue that shutting down a post should be coupled with waving your other hand back in forth is silly. This is the wrong type of muscle memory. The correct muscle memory is that shutting down a valve doesn't require active concentration. That leaves more brain power to pay attention to ensuring that the team is aware of a problem. This could mean signaling with a light or swimming to a team mate and getting their attention by touch.

When the act of shutting down a valve results in a hand waving back and forth for no other purpose then muscle memory then there is something wrong.

To quote brian, "GUE is about producing thinking divers."

That's my point. How come it isn't?

J

 

[Sloth]

Just another wild guess but was this Fish's first go at DIRF?

Yes it was everyone’s first time. We had three rec and one tech pass. We were entertaining the possibility that Steve just didn’t want to give out two tech passes but don’t tell him I said that as we are hoping to get him to swing by on his way to Australia to give us a tech pass eval.

 

[Sloth]

There seem to be two arguments in support of the practice in question. The first is that it is a task loading technique. I can accept that as a valid argument. The second is that it builds the muscle memory of shutting down a valve and signaling with a light. Presumably as a building block to failure management.

This argument is flawed because it assumes that signaling with your light is perfect communication with your team. Theoretically, that may be so, but in practice, there are infinite reasons why that is false. I.e, your team is single file in a blown out wreck/cave, you are in nice pretty tropical water where you decided you just didn't need the 35W light cannon or your 10W just doesn't cut it, or your buddy just isn't paying attention to your frantic light signal. We live in an imperfect world after all. So, to argue that shutting down a post should be coupled with waving your other hand back in forth is silly. This is the wrong type of muscle memory. The correct muscle memory is that shutting down a valve doesn't require active concentration. That leaves more brain power to pay attention to ensuring that the team is aware of a problem. This could mean signaling with a light or swimming to a team mate and getting their attention by touch.

When the act of shutting down a valve results in a hand waving back and forth for no other purpose then muscle memory then there is something wrong.

To quote brian, "GUE is about producing thinking divers."

That's my point. How come it isn't?

J

I don’t mean to sound harsh but I feel you are completely wrong on this. I don’t feel qualified to say why ( I know its a cheap copout) but please run these exact scenarios by your fundies instructor.

I will say this, I find your statement about shutting down a valve as being easy somewhat amusing because I thought the same thing about this and other things going into the class. Even in a fundies class without multiple task loading failures, shutting down a valve didn’t seem easy. Most of what makes it not so easy is all the additionally stress we put on ourselves due to the stress of knowing we are being filmed and having a GUE instructor hovering over you watching every little thing.

We had divers of all skill levels, I thank it is safe to say that everyone was humbled at some point or another.

Please make sure you go in with an open mind and at least be willing to taste the Kool-Aid. If you don’t the class may be tough and not so much fun.

EDIT: I just noticed in your profile that you are GUE trained so I assume that means at least fundies. Were you not taught to signal on a valve drill? Is that the premise of your post to enquire to a possible standards change? Honestly Im surprised that you are GUE trained but you dont see the purpose of signalling during a valve drill.

 

[AndrewJD]

I think its hilarious that everybody thinks I'm a wannabe fundies student...

 

[Sloth]

I think its hilarious that everybody thinks I'm a wannabe fundies student...

Why don’t you run this by the quest list or at least take it to practitioners forum so we can beat ourselves up in there :mooner:

 

[TSandM]

I think what comes up here is a very good question about drills versus real life scenarios, and rote versus thinking learning.

I do not think that just because you have been taught to signal during a valve drill means you will try to do it in a siltout. I DO think that you might catch yourself doing so, and realize it was silly, and take other action. I DO think that if you haven't been drilled to signal, you might forget to do so when you are completely focused on the fact that you are losing gas to the water behind your back, and you're still a thousand feet back in a cave.

Valve drills, when you learn them, are hard. Keeping buoyancy and trim, remembering to signal, keeping eye contact with your teammate, going through the correct sequence . . . it's all a challenge. Fundies level students aren't coping with failures, they're learning procedures. The subsequent classes introduce failure scenarios and require that you cope efficiently with them. This builds on the skills you have learned, but requires more from you than simply regurgitating memorized sequences. Almost everybody, making that leap, will make mistakes and learn from them.

This thread reminds me of talking about the revised valve shutdown sequence that GUE adopted a couple of years ago with Andrew, who was the original architect of Fundies. Andrew has his reasons why he wrote the drill the way he did, and his rationale is that he thinks the original drill helps you to associate which function is related to which post. GUE's rationale for the new drill is that it more closely mimics the sequence in a real failure. My personal feeling is that, if you are dependent on memorized sequences to handle an emergency, you are in a world of hurt; the drills teach you how to manipulate valves while remaining stable in the water column, and nothing more. Handling an actual failure, or even a class scenario, requires a great deal more conscious processing than that.

 

[onfloat]

I think its hilarious that everybody thinks I'm a wannabe fundies student...

Me Too!!!!! Maybe you should come to Hawaii and I could show you a thing or two. I wish I could join you for the dives in June, tell everyone I said Hello.

 

[onfloat]

Honestly Im surprised that you are GUE trained but you dont see the purpose of signalling during a valve drill.

It's not the signalling during the valve drill, but continuing to signal for the entire drill. If you have a emergecy you need to get your team's attention, once you have it why keep signaling? They are already looking at you. Hence wave the light until they look at you, but the more important skill is to shut down the valve without much thought and maintain team awareness.

 

[Iain Thysse]

I think that if you have your light in your hand (which you should) then you should use it to signal since that is one of its uses. Obviously if you are in limited vis situations and it is not working then you will have to find another way to deal with letting your team know, but as a first response the light is the way to go. I am sure that the purpose of the drill is not to teach you that the only way to signal a problem is the light (unless I have completely misunderstood all of my training), but that it should be the first one you try, while trying to sort the problem out yourself. There must be rational thought at all times so you can solve the problem, but a bit of "hand waiving" is certainly not going to exacerbate the problem. Obviously once you have their attention there is no more need to continue waving the light.