Wet Rocks, Wet Schmocks! Class report UTD Cave 1 & 2

[Unified Team Diving]

Lynn

Classes should be about learning and challenging you to find your limitation and therefore inspiring you continue your educational path. Not evaluation or discouraging you. It has always being the industries dilemma in that the same instructor who is supposed to be teaching is also the one evaluating for certification and therefore sometimes a class can turn into evaluation rather than a learning environment.. The bite size chucks has always being about learning and practicing between rather than all-in one shot to achieve "Full" Cave or Tech certification. Some would argue this creates too many classes and too many steps. Others would say it takes too much time and so on and so on. It is always a difficult to balance between too much information, which is over whelming and to many steps which is too long a path. I have being teaching and involved with the industry at a higher level for over 20 years now and we still struggle every day. One I can tell you is that some learn it and/or are more natural at it and others require more time. That is the beauty of "bite size" chunks.

Andrew

 

[Unified Team Diving]

letting the guy run out of gas and cramming cave 1 and 2 into one week don't sit well with me and I would have (originally) expected more from UTD

There you go again twisting and weaving. I think it was made clear that "no one ran out of air." Although you continue to drive a point which was clearly stated that "no one ran out of air." I am not sure what part you did not read or understand of "no one ran out of air" but let me repeat it for your benefit "no one ran out of air." I can continue repeating "no one ran out of air" until whenever you would like ....

 

[LiteHedded]

semantics....they let him suck a tank dry while his buddy was on a backup reg, then delivered a long hose that was off. that's a novel approach to cave training.

good thing these guys were solid, squared away divers and they just handled it. could've gone another way...

 

[PfcAJ]

I can think of at least one death where it DIDN'T go so well. Same scenario with a closed isolator.

 

[Unified Team Diving]

semantics....

My point. You are twisting and dissecting a training scenario to spin it negatively, is what you are trying to do. You were not there, you were not involved, you are not even an instructor who has experience in providing critical skill training. Shawn was surrounded by divers with tons of gas, and instructor who is qualified to teach and run the training scenario's and btw had a full cylinder of gas on his back. So again... no one ran out of air. Critical skill training ("simulated" failures) is an important part of learning and has being done in all cave and tech training since I can remember. If Shawn felt in danger or threaten he has every rights and means to air it publicly and with the UTD Quality control board. He certainly doesn't need your "unqualified" opinion.

Andrew

 

[PfcAJ]

So was the tank sucked dry or not, Andrew? Or were you not there, either?

 

[LiteHedded]

My point. You are twisting and dissecting a training scenario to spin it negatively, is what you are trying to do. You were not there, you were not involved, you are not even an instructor who has experience in providing critical skill training. Shawn was surrounded by divers with tons of gas, and instructor who is qualified to teach and run the training scenario's and btw had a full cylinder of gas on his back. So again... no one ran out of air. Critical skill training ("simulated" failures) is an important part of learning and has being done in all cave and tech training since I can remember. If Shawn felt in danger or threaten he has every rights and means to air it publicly and with the UTD Quality control board. He certainly doesn't need your "unqualified" opinion.

Andrew

ok dude. I'll take my unqualified opinion and **** off.

cheers.

 

[Unified Team Diving]

Obviously "not", as he had a full tank of gas on his back.

 

[ucfdiver]

Actually Andrew, I supported UTD until things have spiraled down hill

UTD offers an online classroom forum to let you discuss any questions you might have with instructors. It's not as good as a real class, but the ratio deco one has some interesting discussion that you might not hear in a real class, because the question bank is so much smaller.

The UTD online classroom is excellent for expanding what you were taught in almost any level of diving course on how your body handles gas loading. It's well worth the money. I think the ratio deco for basic open water diving explained in that course is the best way to teach new divers that I've heard.

I must admit, I'm becoming more and more impressed with every UTD course report I read.

I really liked UTD's foundation. I thought it offered a solid set of basic skills, and then allowed divers to more slowly progress to deeper or longer dives in small easy to digest courses. This was a great idea! One of your fundies students who later went on through c2 with Tyler Moon mentored me a ton when I was a new cave diver, and I've dove with multiple students of yours out in California, who were all solid divers.

Had you guys stuck with the fundamentals of breaking DIR training into smaller, more easily digestible chunks, allowing a more realistic crossover program into DIR training than GUE does, and introducing 25/25 into the recreational/intro to tech world you would still have my support.

However, around mid to late 2010, UTD started re-branding various products, as well as rolling out several new products to the market with well known design flaws (the Z system is an example here, with the IP mismatch issues), I began to question my support. Then came the MX CCR, which took a CCR with a very solid record of performance and heavily modified it, with courses being released very quickly after the instructors were trained to USE the device. This was again repeated in 2010 with the KISS version, after for whatever reason the Meg/UTD as well as UTD/DSS relationship was no more. Shortly after I see that SM CCR courses are being made public, and now C1/2 combos are being offered to students. Somewhere in there it leaked that UTD courses aren't marking bottom stages.

My issue is that your group is catering to introductory level tech divers who don't know any better and using a DIR badge as a marketing gimmick, after so many worked so hard to refine a system and used this to label it. Unfortunately there's no legal method to protect it, and because of that it, and having it thrown around on SM CCR blog demonstrations, now the term DIR has no meaning.

I can think of at least one death where it DIDN'T go so well. Same scenario with a closed isolator.

These guys are dead, but at least one of them isn't out of air...
Nov12-2008

 

[Unified Team Diving]

James

Well then I stand corrected, I do appreciate your support, even if only in the beginning. Although I believe we are still true to our roots and continue to offer the traditional OC DIR "bite size chunks" that you mention. However I personally feel that pushing into new area's, that you may not agree with, is something that drives me in the industry. If not for that drive, who knows if "Fundamentals" would of ever reached the Open water circles. At that time, 2001, it was certainly very controversial as to weather cave skills belonged in the open water and that I or GUE at the time was gonna kill someone teaching them to dive a long hose when it is unnecessary in the open water. Divers were gonna choke and drown due to the 7ft hose wrapped around their neck. I know all the scare tactics and appreciate those who are trying to save the unwashed massive from "the evil man". But again these are just scare tactics. I believed at that time that we coudl bring long hose and backplate to all. Moving forward, UTD has pushed into new areas to open up those areas to our divers, not as DIR but as "compatible" and consistent with our convenants. I have never stated and continue to state that Sidemount CCR diving is DIR. DIR in it's traditional form is a set of OC doubles with deco bottles on the left. Even the PSCR is a diversion from the true form and it, in it's self, has being reworked to be compatible with DIR but it is not traditional DIR.

Andrew