Why do you dismiss DIR?

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by VTWarrenG
Since I'm scheduled to take DIRF and Tech 1 with Chamberlin and Georgitsis, respectively... I have to ask...

Just kidding....
Don't sweat it....
And don't pay your money for Tech 1 until you pass DIRF...
And have a bunch of doubles dives laying line under your belt...

 

[newton]

Originally posted by VTWarrenG
Since I'm scheduled to take DIRF and Tech 1 with Chamberlin and Georgitsis, respectively... I have to ask...

What kind of abuse is suffered in these classes? So far I've heard that it makes grown men cry, and women want to stop diving altogether. How bad does it get? Do they yell at you? Spit in your face? Call you a maggot? Just make you feel stupid?

I can't speak to Andrew at all. I've never met the man, since apparently he was off abusing some poor Tech-1 students at the time.

However, I enjoyed Dave in our class. Tell him Nate from Montana says hi, and has been diving in a pool at least once/week since my class. Also tell him to start using a real OS in their product. (He'll know what I'm talking about.)

However, I will say that be prepared to be humiliated. Be prepared for the *worst* situation you can think of, and then they'll think of something worse.


You're on the Andrea-Doria, your buddy lost his mask, and both your tanks have been impaled without your knowledge, so you've just run out of air. Now, to make things interesting, your weight belt is about to fall off. At this point, keep your weight belt on, calmly swim over to your (blind) buddy, explain to him using hand-signals that you're out of air, and do a controlled ascent and any necessary deco stops. Remember to keep good trim/buoyancy the entire time, and not miss *any* step. (Make sure all your equipment is properly stowed, etc...)

What, you didn't anticipate such a situation happening?

However, the classroom session was *awesome*. Don't feel intimidated by the instructors. Ask stupid questions. Ask them *why* things are done a particular way. The best part of my class came when the students asked hard questions to the instructors. Often-times they said things that could *NOT* be right, but after explaining them I had a better understanding of why things were done a particular way.

(Now, I didn't always agree with their reasons, but it certainly gave me something to chew for the weekend, and in some cases for months afterwards.)

Don't take *ANY* of it personally. Have a thick-skin.

Finally, don't plan on having any fun diving. Don't expect it to get better as the weekend progresses. It'll get worse. Don't plan on a nice touchy-feely dive to wrap everything up.

Above all, enjoy the class!

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by newton
Above all, enjoy the class!

Yeah.... enjoy the class...

 

[VTWarrenG]

I dunno... I'm usually the one who makes other people cry. Usually, if someone yells at me or calls me farm animal stupid or a waste of sperm, I laugh. I guess my mother got me used to it.

- Warren

 

[Lost Yooper]

Originally posted by TRUETEXAN
Hey yoop,
I really enjoy reading your posts, you unselfishly help people all the time on these boards by giving good solid information without resorting to telling them that they aren't "dong it right", or that they aren't wearing a backplate and wings, or breathing the long hose, but yet you directly answer their questions to the best of your ability, this also makes me think that deep down you also think that there is probably more than one way to do anything, let alone diving.

Sure, there's more than one way to breath underwater and see all the fishies, but I do believe there exists a "better" way than most which is applicable to virtually all forms of diving (recreational and technical). DIR has proven itself to ME that it will work exceedingly well in every environment. This is why I started this thread -- to see why DIR doesn't work for other people or why they choose not to incorporate it into their diving.

This is how I see the DIR system. If I wanted to become a cave diver I would be the first one in line to go get DIR training, and I may do it anyway becase I like to learn and I realize that when you close your mind to new ideas, you can no longer advance, can you?

That is right. A closed mind isn't a good thing. If someone presents an idea to me that makes sense then I'll consider it. For example, UP told me how he attaches his argon bottle. I considered it for a few days, and I'm going to give it a try. I don't think DIR is about being close minded -- though it is for some, I guess. Even Irvine and those guys change things from time to time.

I realize that in order to have faith in anything that you have to believe in it with all of your heart, and the DIR folks do that exactly. They have taken a system that they have proven works, simplified it, and to their belief perfected it, but what makes them think that they are the only people in the world that are capable of doing this?

I guess because there hasn't been anyone come close to their success. It has gone beyond "belief" for me. I "know" DIR will work for any diving environment I am likely to get into (recreational, deep, wreck, cave, and ice).

This is not a cookie-cutter world that we live in, and not everybody fits the DIR mold, does this mean that they are stupid and should not be allowed to dive? Most if not all people have to be given a reason why the should do something, as in how will it benefit them and so on, not just be told to do it because someone says so. Do you buy a car just because the salesman told you to? Or did you want to know the features and benefits first and how much it would cost? That is just my take on this situation for what it's worth. And I totally respect the way you handle this discussion Yoop, and you are welcome to come down an dive with us anytime!

I agree. To blindly follow anybody, whether it be George Irvine, JJ, Brett Gilliam, or Tom Mount, is not good IMO. At one time or another, I looked at several of these guys to figure out who had the most credibility as I saw it. For a long time, I was paying attention to Gilliam (he was nicer than Irvine ) and was lead to believe that deep air diving was OK -- besides Brett's still alive . Then, as I dug deeper, I figured out what was going on.

When I decided that I wanted to go deeper and get into this tech stuff full bore, I asked myself:

Who is the most technical of divers? Cavers (IMO)
Who is the ultimate among the cavers doing the most elite dives and with the best record? My research pointed me towards the WKPP.
Why were they so successful? Hogarthian.
What's Hogarthian? It ended up being DIR.
What is DIR and can I use it for my diving? Yup, no problem.

Then the questions started flowing out of control, so I had to have someone to answer them. So, one day I worked up the courage to ask Irvine a basic question (privately). He responded the next day and answered my questions. He's been doing so ever since. Why? Why does he take the time to talk to me? What's in it for him? Keep in mind, this was all before Halcyon, EE, or GUE. I don't like his attitude towards the rest of the world, but he's always treated me with respect and, to be honest, I do have a bit of respect for him.

Anyway, I appreciate the kind comments. Don't be surprised if I show up in Texas someday .

Mike

 

[Stone]

What, you didn't anticipate such a situation happening?

In my lowly PADI Rescue class we were confronted with an instructor "out of air" and handcuffed to the ladder in the deep end of the pool.

What to do?

One student calmly took the instructor's slate and wrote:

"You're f**ked"

She nearly drowned from laughing.

 

[The Chairman]

Originally posted by VTWarrenG
What kind of abuse is suffered in these classes? So far I've heard that it makes grown men cry, and women want to stop diving altogether. How bad does it get? Do they yell at you? Spit in your face? Call you a maggot? Just make you feel stupid?
- Warren

Thats just here on the board... they get real nasty in person... nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

 

[VTWarrenG]

Thats just here on the board... they get real nasty in person... nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

I don't get it. I don't see any GUE instructors on ScubaBoard.

- Warren

 

[AquaTec]

I have been following this thread and to date have avoided jumping in on the old my team is better than you team stuff that is so prevalent on this board.

Out of all the threads that have taken place there are very few of them that are really educational.

Yes there are one or two that truly offer information.

It would be interesting for each team to lay out what they do exactly that makes them one type of diver or another, and most importantly why they do it.

I'll start
One thing I do is carry stage bottles with me some on each side, equally distributed.
[In a previous thread I misused the term and called them side mounts] basically sling under my arms between one and four tanks for deco, travel, etc.
I like to balance them out some on each side to have better trim during my dive.
I have heard the other side that all staged bottles stay on the left so that you can run the scooter with your right hand.
I don't use a scooter [yet] but I find both my hands are free and I have tried a scooter before and never gave the bottles a second though. To switch gasses while scootering doesn't work for my diving, because I switch gasses during the vertical portion of the dive, although I descend at a 100ft/min I ascend slower than a pregnant snail, so I have lots of time to organize my gas switch, and doing a gas switch takes about 1/2 a second anyways.


So yes by describing one of my techniques I open myself up to criticism and I am note even sure which side it will be from, [well that’s not true there seems to be one side that is more critical of diving styles] Yoop and Pug excluded

But what I am trying to do is offer a technique and why I use the technique, which cares what side of the fence it falls on.

By the way the reasons for 32% only are pretty week as that could be said about any gas used at an appropriate depth. There’s nothing wrong with 32% I would just like to know a better reason for it being preferred, and is it one persons preference or a larger groups preference?
I would like to hear more about anybody preferred gas.
I tend to use 36% as a travel, but sometimes I use a Trimix as a travel. But that’s a different discussion


I am not on either team but you can bet I will make use of the best from both teams. And if that means I use more from one team than from the other that just means that for me as an individual for the type of diving I am doing it works

[For recreational diving I am quite happy with you run of the mill off the shelf scuba unit, I am keeping this thread along the tech line of thinking]

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by AquaTec
Out of all the threads that have taken place there are very few of them that are really educational.

Ho AquaTec.... perhaps not for you but others might feel differently and anyway this is not all about education... sometimes it is just fun to talk about diving!

By the way the reasons for 32% only are pretty week as that could be said about any gas used at an appropriate depth. There’s nothing wrong with 32% I would just like to know a better reason for it being preferred, and is it one persons preference or a larger groups preference?
I would like to hear more about anybody preferred gas.
I tend to use 36% as a travel, but sometimes I use a Trimix as a travel. But that’s a different discussion.

First of all the question came up during a dicussion not about technical diving but DIR training and specifically in a comment about the DIR fundamentals class. Nothing about travel gases.

DIR takes a *standards* approach to gas selection rather than a *very best mix for each and every depth.* You are correct that the gas choice could have been something other that 32% .... say 34.7% or whatever a *best mix* calculation called for. But 32% is already common and commonly available. 32% also happens to be handy to mix. (how much O2 do you add to a cylinder that will be topped to 3000 psi with air to get 32 as opposed to 36?)

Actually your blanket dismissal of my list of reasons as week (sic)does not really address them individually nor add to the information content of this thread.

To clarify the DIR standards for this discussion:
0-100 EAN32
80-120 30/30
120-160 21/35

What gas selections would you suggest and why?
Are you in favor of standard mixes?
Do you have objections to standard mixes?
Which specific points do you disagree with in my list?
Do you do your own blending?
Do you bank certain mixes?

I certainly do not want to compel you to chose as I do...
I have simply found that blending and banking a standard mix fruitful.