No training available, what do I do now?

lizardland

Miaow!

I bet he made quite a few RBs that didn't work before it though. And, er, just out of interest, Phi, did you do a KISS course when you first bought yours?

Simon, rather than signing up for a full course on an irrelevant rebreather, have you tried just talking to an instructor and asking if he'd be willing to go through some skills and drills while diving your lump? I'm not sure how that sits with the agencies/HSE but it's worth asking before you go wasting money on a course a lot of which isn't relevant and may make you drool after a proper Rebreather!!!

__________________
Can you imagine drifting along in the sea with your mouth open and a load of f***ing plankton going in? You'd like it, would you?

www.westons-cider.co.uk

Azerbaijani Association of Technical Divers Publicity Officer and Goat Wrangler

decoweenie

Er, when I bought mine, there was no KISS course available yet...

And yes, I already had:

• 2 Rebreather courses that lasted 1-week each
• dived at least 5 Rebreather units before
• converted the Dolphin into a CCR before the KISS valve was invented

Is that OK in comparison with your 30-min course (as you had written) ?

__________________
"...after a while you get bored offering advice to a bull that like to keep butting the fence with its head rather than walking through the open gate..."

- Rebreather World PM

Digger

Well, I've been diving a similar unit I built for a few months now, and I've got to be honest with you, there's few if any instructors who will touch it with a very very long bargepole. PSA nearly offered a course as I understand it, but the nearest thing you're going to get is a KISS course. You're not driving a KISS though. You have to develop your own set of skills for the unit you have made. Most homebuilders will come up with a list of skills from other Rebreather courses plus a few unit-specific skills. Effectively they write their own course. That's what I did, and it works.

Unless you have very very understanding insurers (I've never met any) your life insurance isn't going to be worth diddly, but then I don't have any, because I don't really have any dependents, and it was too expensive to bother with anyhow. If you do, you need to think very very carefully about the route from here on in. Dying in 6m of water is still dying, and they will carry out the good old post mortem, which will probably have someone from BSAC/PADI/TDI saying that this is not accepted standard practice, and that it is considered ridiculously stupid. They're probably right, and we'll probably win Darwin awards from articles written by journalists who know nothing about the sport.

Got any photos? Would be good to see how you've solved a few problems I ran into, wanted to see if you dealt with the same!

Hope this helps.

Digs.

decoweenie

Before anyone got the wrong impression, Stuart and I are old buddies...

[RANT]

Personally, this instruction issue has been popping up quite a few times at different places, and there has always been great debate to follow...

In the past, I have held the same view as Stuart that there is no need for instruction. And the main reason for that view was because I didn't feel like I needed one.

When I was about to take a diving course in the past, I would have done so much research on it months beforehand. Sometimes I even done the dives. For example, I was diving trimix before I took the trimix course. Or I sat down and computed by hand mathematically how to do partial pressure blending before reading the manual.

It was just in my nature to be prepared and be meticulous.

Now that I have some experience teaching different people how to dive rebreather units, I have since changed my view.

I have had very good students whom have made my life so easy. They already knew a lot from reading ahead of time, were very experienced OC divers, were calm and followed instructions to a T.

But I also had my fair share of "difficult" students whom were not prepared, were not meticulous about prepping the unit, were not thinking for themselves and rather follow rules blindly, etc.

Of course, we are all different people with different personalities and traits. Thus we will approach different tasks differently.

Some will recognize the important parts right away, will almost always do the correct thing without being corrected repeatedly, will stay calm to think and get out of trouble as trained, etc.

But then there will be some whom will not do the right thing as their first choice, and will need to be looked after a lot more until they completely understand everything.

Now... Could anyone objectively classify themselves into the apropriate group ? I read it somewhere that everyone thinks of him/herself as above-average. Then who are the average and below-average people ?

Plus, as much as we think we are all experienced and know a lot about a lot of things, I believe there are plenty of things could be learned from a proper diving course and a good instructor. Especially on something you haven't actually done before -- like diving a rebreather.

Just remember that a great diver doesn't necessary is a great instructor!

A good instructor will teach more than the course agenda, and will make the course interesting and challenging for all of the students.

[/RANT]

__________________
"...after a while you get bored offering advice to a bull that like to keep butting the fence with its head rather than walking through the open gate..."

- Rebreather World PM

Simon A

Digs,
Unfortunately no photo's, my camera got stolen (along with my mates car). Anyway you're only about a mile down the road, why don't we meet up for a beer and you can have a look at it then? (have you still got the number?)

The main thing I want to do is to do shallow/puddle dives with someone who knows what they are doing so I can get feedback about my (currently) comedy bouyancy. The other idea was to borrow an inspo and do the inspo course, this would get me some help and feedback on the bouyancy issues and would also allow me to get access to inspo spares easily. Also once the Mrs releases the spending freeze I'd like to go out and buy an ECCR.

Simon A

decoweenie

Personally, I don't think the Inspo is a good unit to try on the first time to learn about buoyancy issue due to OTS-CL. I still see "experienced" YBOD divers who have terrible trim (IMHO).

An BM-CL unit will be better to start learning about better trim / etc.

Just my 2 Dirhams...

__________________
"...after a while you get bored offering advice to a bull that like to keep butting the fence with its head rather than walking through the open gate..."

- Rebreather World PM

dive2dive2000

[quote=lizardland]There are generic Rebreather courses out there aimed at homebuilders who get grief from shops for not having a crappy bit of laminated paper with an unflattering picture on it. I did my generic course [searching for card...] in 1995, it was a waste of money then and I'll be surprised if it is any different now. My own view is that if you don't know what you are doing then stay the hell away from homebuilding. I'll make the assumption that anyone who has built and tested their own rebreather knows how to dive it, they just need to convince themselves they know how to dive it.


I would have to disagree. I know a few individuals non divers as well as divers who could fabricate a working HB CCR. But to start self teaching how to dive one to me does not make sense. a couple of small mistakes and my condolences to the family posts are sure to star posting. My PPO2

__________________
Safe Diving,
Martin

"but what's the fun of getting what you need, instead of what you want?"

ccscuba

Just the normal stuff you's expect with a new low volume unit, I guess.
Flooded the electronics pod (the early ones had a design issue) couple of flooded loops due to holes on counterlungs - you can recover it from partial flood, though, mouthpiece leaked (easily fixed). No software bugs but lots of alarms in early software, these are mostly tidied up now.
Can't fault the service though, and I think the 2nd batch (mine was in the first batch) have all of these early issues sorted out. It's the most stable unit I've ever dived, plus multiple degrees of redundancy in the unit and the electronics make it a rather nice bit of kit.

Genesis

My view is that each diver should choose for themself whether to learn on their own (via whatever method - mentoring, personal design, etc) or take a formal class.

I believe that we all have a right to calibrate our own risk:reward ratios on our own. I have done this in my own diving, much to the consternation of the "pros."

This path is clearly not for everyone. But then again, diving is not for everyone. It is incredibly intolerant of stupidity, no matter where and on what gear. That's pretty much inherent any time you strap on gear to go somewhere that you'd survive for less than 5 minutes if you didn't have it, or misused it.

I'm working on building my own unit now, for two reasons:

1. I am unwilling to buy something without KNOWLEDGE (not a guess!) that I will be able to maintain - which means get parts - for it off the shelf for the forseeable future, especially with the prices people want to charge. There is exactly one unit that meets this description right now, and its not yet "really" available. If a manufacturer can't sell me a unit off the shelf tomorrow, they have declared that if I need a part I might have to wait a month - or six! A friend of mine with an Inspiration had his back at the US depot for six months getting it worked on. I won't accept being without something I spend close to US $10k on for six months under any circumstances.

2. I have a MAJOR problem with people telling me how to calibrate my own risk:reward ratios, and what level of care I need. Problem is, they CLAIM to set the ratio "safer" than I do, but in fact I believe they set it FAR further along the "dangerous" side. The bottom line is that I do not do "trust me" dives. This has necessitated that I "break the rules" in the past, since by definition following them means I have to make one of those dives during said classes given the format they're in these days.

Let's be real here. I can't buy a unit and "dive" it in my living room, then on my stationary bike, because nobody will give me the darn codes (or scrubber inserts!) until I have the class. So I can't get comfortable with how it works and all before I have to get in the water with it - I have to do that on an instructor's schedule rather than mine. I think that sucks. If I manage to pass out in my living room as long as someone else is there (and understands that if I start to get "strange" they are to pull the mouthpiece IMMEDIATELY and replace it with the nice OC 100% O2 one sitting next to me - and if that doesn't work, start rescue breathing) I'm very unlikely to die - its about as low of a risk environment as you're going to find.

I went through the same thing when I started doing deco. I rigged up a cylinder for deco gas, filled it with the same Nitrox I was breathing, and did a deco-like ascent, switching to my "deco gas" at 70', then doing staged-deco-style stops all the way up. Did it time and time again, until I had it nailed. Then and only then did I actually do a REAL decompression dive with REAL decompression gas in the cylinder..... Same thing with the theory - read a lot, ran a bunch of profiles in the various software available, learned how the "shape" looks, practiced doing the stops, etc.

Is that a better path? I don't know. But I didn't break any of my "no trust-me dives" rule this way, and I would have had to the other way. I still don't have the card, but I've done plenty of dives since then. I'm comfortable with diving with deco gas and mix - I mix my own, so I don't care what some shop thinks, and I clean my own, so if I screw up I only blow myself up. At this point to actually take the class would be simply to satisfy someone who wants to see a piece of plastic to get on a boat - I choose instead to use my own boat.....

Anyway, that's my perspective, and its gotten me shouted down on a number of different boards around the net, and actually kicked off one. I find it interesting - and refreshing - that such a view has at least some following here.

It gives me hope.....

Simon A

Except my unit has OTS counter lungs, so that's what I'm going to have to cope with, (Strangely enough they also have inspiration writen on them.....)

Simon A