What AOW courses did you find the most helpful?

[melfox26]

While helpful to get some tips regarding each specialty, only doing 1 dive per specialty for the AOW cert. certainly doesn't compare to taking the actual specialty course. Don't get me wrong, it's a great class to take, as it introduces you to a lot of different aspects of diving all in one class. However, I don't think I'm an expert on Search and Recovery or Underwater Navigation because I read one chapter and did one dive of each.

Deep, Bouyancy, Navigation, Boat, and Search/Recovery are probably the most helpful ones to take.

Mel
PADI Rescue Diver/Nitrox

 

[Mel.B]

Hi,

I'm in the process of doing my AOW at the moment (still have to do night dive and complete nav section...it helps to learn how to read/use a compass before trying!) but for me, the most useful thing was talking to my instructor and letting him know what I wanted to get out of the course. For me, that was learning how to use a reel, as reels are very common where I dive and I had had a close call using a reel several weeks beforehand when I got tangled up in one. On each dive we did (deep, nav, drift and naturalist) we used a reel to various extents and while I'm not proficient with using a reel I am getting over my fear of them!

Mel

 

[Warren_L]

Navigation was very useful, but DPVs were a blast! I'd try to get that in there if possible.

 

[Scuba_Signer]

I'm thinking seriously about getting my AOW, and now I see I have to make some choices.

Which of the elective courses did you find the most useful? I think I should take Peak Performance Buoyancy, but that still leaves two electives.

I'd really appreciate your input.

Thanks!

I just received my AOW card in the mail last week (while I was away diving in Coz). In addition to the required Deep Diving and U/W Nav, I did Boat Diving, Night Diving, and Peak Performance Buoyancy, and Drift Diving. I did all these dives on a previous trip last October on the Aquacat liveaboard. All these were useful at Cozumel.

Steve

 

[eod]

The one I benefitted most from was by far the dry suit part. Not so much that we learned anything new, but that I could build my confidence when playing around at shallow depth and controlling the feet-up runaway ascents.

Other than that the navigation was good. But having played around alot on land with map and compass it wasn't anything new to me.

The other dives were just for fun

 

[Bluefish]

I definitely learned the most from search and recovery. And when I find that treasure chest, I'll be glad I learned to use the lift bag. I also did ppb and wreck. The ppb is good, but wreck depends on where you are doing your class, and where you intend to dive. It does not cover any type of penetration, just what to look for and what to look out for.

 

[Hoppy]

I learned the most from the bit where the 2 Instructors left me underwater. Seriously it taught me a sharp lesson in the fact that the nearest air was now 36 feet above me !

I now dive with a redundant air source !

But that aside I got the most out of PPB and would recommend Nav as you will always use both.

Have fun.

And yes they did get a stuffing when I reverted to OW, searched and surfaced.

 

[mania]

I did navigation - and I agree that this one is really helpfull. I also did night, wreck and deep. The last one was an interesting lesson.
Mania

 

[Scubaguy62]

I'm thinking seriously about getting my AOW, and now I see I have to make some choices.

Which of the elective courses did you find the most useful? I think I should take Peak Performance Buoyancy, but that still leaves two electives.

I'd really appreciate your input.

Thanks!

PADI requires the Advanced Navigation and Deep Dives as their core. As far as the electives, I did boat, underwater naturalist, and search and recovery for the AOW, but above all that, I also did night and boat.

My advise is, do the courses you feel will benefit you more, considering the environment in which you dive and the skills in which you feel you could improve. In my case, my trim and buoyancy came pretty natural, and although not a supreme master at it, I have chosen to do PPB at a later date, and as a specialty course, just as a means of re-enforcement.

If all your diving is going to be at home and you plan on investing in a dry-suit, then it goes without saying, dry-suit must be one of your electives; if there are things to see at night, and it is comfortable temperature wise (both in water, and out of water) do night; if you always dive from boats and the sea conditions involve high surf and currents, do boat, and so on.

The AOW is an introduction to the wonderful world of advanced diving, and an opportunity for you to choose which way you want to go in diving, so don't limit yourself to just 3 electives...best thing would be to do them all, but then again, that's what specialty courses are for. One last tip, if you're planing on going pro, then I will strongly advise you do search and recovery, as it will serve as a good foundation for the rescue diver course, which I believe no diver should do without.

Semper Safe,

Rick

 

[simbrooks]

Firstly i would read through the book/cd that comes as part of the course, see what knowledge you can pick up and from the skills/activities/info mentioned make up your mind. Have you talked to your instructor yet?

We are set to do our AOW next weekend, spending time doing the education part (already read the book) for the various electives and the math part of the nitrox (doing in conjunction) one day and the dives over another weekend. As a seperate speciality we are doing PPB, but for our electives we are doing night, wreck and search & recovery. The night and S&R for skills and experience (practice at navigation with that too), the wreck, just because we have only done one wreck dive so far, and if we do our cavern course later this year it might lead nicely into the techniques for wreck penetration which is covered in the actual wreck speciality (not adventure dive).

We are doing the PPB for obvious reasons and would like to spend some time on that, we didnt do all that much on anything like in OW training, so a little work for $125 for a few hours is a small price. We are also looking at doing rescue in the next few months as well, just to add to our knowledge/ability to deal with problems etc. Our instructor is also going to give advice on multi-level and computer diving during the class session even though we didnt ask for it as an adventure dive - which i think could be useful as well. We could also have done boat or drift, but from reading the book it didnt look like you learnt that much that you couldnt know with a nautical background/reading and some practice/briefing before a dive.

Where do you intend to dive, what types of dives do you do or would you like to do? That will probably help pin down at least 2 of the 3 electives, at least that was the case with us.