What AOW courses did you find the most helpful?

[Fly N Dive]

over the summer i got my aow and 5 specialties: boat, equipment, night, uw naturalist, and wreck. let me explain i was on a 3 week trip in the bvi's and on a liveaboard. and because it was all tennagers they had us do extra to get each card. ex. did anyone else take a written test to get their aow?

 

[diver567]

over the summer i got my aow and 5 specialties: boat, equipment, night, uw naturalist, and wreck. let me explain i was on a 3 week trip in the bvi's and on a liveaboard. and because it was all tennagers they had us do extra to get each card. ex. did anyone else take a written test to get their aow?

Not that I know of, it's not required with PADI. I don't know about other certification agencies.

 

[Curly]

Navigation. Most useful.

Also did the night diving, which was a blast. But the Navigation dives were the best.

 

[azsilver]

over the summer i got my aow and 5 specialties: boat, equipment, night, uw naturalist, and wreck. let me explain i was on a 3 week trip in the bvi's and on a liveaboard. and because it was all tennagers they had us do extra to get each card. ex. did anyone else take a written test to get their aow?

When I took AOW training we had to take a written exam.

We also covered all the specialties in our Classroom and did extensive pool work and ocean dives to complete our certification. Stress Rescue training was included.

Stress Rescue should be part of your advanced training, for better understanding and further respect for proper safety when diving.

When diving you should have vested interest in safety, as your life or your buddy’s life depends on it.

an AZ Diver

 

[Fly N Dive]

what agency did you get your aow through? mine was padi

 

[azsilver]

what agency did you get your aow through? mine was padi

My AOW is through SSI---Which I completed a number of years ago.

 

[Fly N Dive]

ok my point was there is no writen test at the end of the padi aow, but the place i did it with made us take a 4-5 page test! everyone passed!!!

 

[love2godeep]

Thanks for all the input. It really helped. In two days, I'm leaving for the Philippines. It's a business trip, but I hope to get in a few dives. If it works out, I'll do one or two specialty dives, toward my AOW certification. I'd like to do them in this order:

Peak Performance and Buoyancy

Deep Dive (I've done a fair amount of diving to 80-90 ft, but I guess I have to have this one to get the AOW)

Underwater Navigation (This one intimidates me. On the OW navigation check out, there was zero vis, I swam out with the compass, turned around, swam back, and figured I'd blown it big; suddenly found myself back at the starting point; still don't know how it happened!)

Fish ID and/or Underwater Naturalist (I'm really looking forward to these; now I just hope I can find someone who knows their stuff.)

Night Dive (I did one of these already but the flashlight they gave me went out and it wasn't a whole lot of fun. I've heard night diving is awesome, though.)

Maybe by the time I'm finished with this I'll have my computer figured out so I won't have to take that one!

Can't wait to get wet!

 

[DeepTrip]

I can't determine whether to take naturalist, Search and Recovery, or Wreck. Can anyone give suggestion? Is the wreck training includes introduction for penetration?

 

[XJae]

I can't determine whether to take naturalist, Search and Recovery, or Wreck. Can anyone give suggestion? Is the wreck training includes introduction for penetration?

You do need to take three as electives, and you mentioned three?

The wreck dive for aow shouldn't have any penetration,
but should be more of an overview of what to look out for
and what's to come if you do the entire specialty.

I personally liked taking search and recovery,
I took the entire specialty and got a lot out of it.

But something to think about...
When i took it a couple of aow students did the first dive of the course with me, counting it as their aow dive. Well, they had just did their ow checkout dives that same weekend, (an entirely different contoversy, whether aow should immediately follow ow), and they really didn't get much out of it. They're buoyancy was way off, silted the whole place out, couldn't use a compass, couldn't count kick cycles, etc. The instructor actually did an additional dive with me later, at my request, because i didn't think it right to count that one. Thx.

I guess my point is you should you should size up your skills,
as well as determine what things you will want to be doing
as a diver going forward.