Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

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2loud4u
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by 2loud4u »

I also took few extra worksheets with me to practice on. I would also be very interested in going to the next class as well. The only thing I was ever taught was go dive until you have about half left, or your buddy has about half left then turn. Any one that has ever dove with me will know I err on the side of caution and probably irritate some of my buddies by staying about a foot and a half away from them because I am not confident 100% if something went wrong and I am 15 feet away. I never struggled with any of my skills, but at the same time, I knew the drills were coming, and I knew the DM would help out if I had trouble.

The class last night sure opened my eyes to how many ways there are to plan a dive for gas management... I was thinking today though, as long as it took me to do the math last night in a nice dry warm classroom with a calculator and buddies all around to help, by the time I figure it out underwater, cold, and doing math in my head, my rock bottom time will be long past...
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airsix
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by airsix »

LCF wrote:And at the risk of being an agent provcateur...
The best part about that post is I picture you wearing a beret and mustache, speaking with a French accent. Actually the best part is that I've actually seen that. :biggrin:
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CaptnJack
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by CaptnJack »

2loud4u wrote:I also took few extra worksheets with me to practice on. I would also be very interested in going to the next class as well. The only thing I was ever taught was go dive until you have about half left, or your buddy has about half left then turn. Any one that has ever dove with me will know I err on the side of caution and probably irritate some of my buddies by staying about a foot and a half away from them because I am not confident 100% if something went wrong and I am 15 feet away. I never struggled with any of my skills, but at the same time, I knew the drills were coming, and I knew the DM would help out if I had trouble.

The class last night sure opened my eyes to how many ways there are to plan a dive for gas management... I was thinking today though, as long as it took me to do the math last night in a nice dry warm classroom with a calculator and buddies all around to help, by the time I figure it out underwater, cold, and doing math in my head, my rock bottom time will be long past...
Take some worksheets with you and do one before the next ~15 dives. Pretty soon you'll have a darned good idea how much to reserve for your tanks at various depths. Let your buddy worry about his/her minimum gas (just make sure they are actually reserving some plausible cf)
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Sounder
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by Sounder »

2loud4u wrote:I also took few extra worksheets with me to practice on. I would also be very interested in going to the next class as well. The only thing I was ever taught was go dive until you have about half left, or your buddy has about half left then turn. Any one that has ever dove with me will know I err on the side of caution and probably irritate some of my buddies by staying about a foot and a half away from them because I am not confident 100% if something went wrong and I am 15 feet away. I never struggled with any of my skills, but at the same time, I knew the drills were coming, and I knew the DM would help out if I had trouble.

The class last night sure opened my eyes to how many ways there are to plan a dive for gas management... I was thinking today though, as long as it took me to do the math last night in a nice dry warm classroom with a calculator and buddies all around to help, by the time I figure it out underwater, cold, and doing math in my head, my rock bottom time will be long past...
It's all just practice... then you start "getting to know it" and it gets easier. Next thing you know, you're more relaxed during your dive and enjoying it more because you KNOW how much gas you need and how much you have.

My wife only needs an 80cf tank for just about any dive she does... but she typically dove a 100cf tank so she would have enough gas for ME, just in case. That's the kind of "eye opening" we got from it the first time we took the class... and I've been to about 3 of them now in addition to drilling on it heavily during my technical and DM training and applying the concepts to every dive I plan.

Trust me, it gets much easier with practice... just start using it.
airsix wrote:
LCF wrote:And at the risk of being an agent provcateur...
The best part about that post is I picture you wearing a beret and mustache, speaking with a French accent. Actually the best part is that I've actually seen that. :biggrin:
You mean, like this???

Image

That's a great picture, but I think this one is my favorite from that trip...

Image
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BDub
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by BDub »

Between the pm's I've received today from people interested in attending the next workshop, along with people who weren't able to attend last night due to the date or space constraints, let's schedule one for next month.

Let's tentatively plan for March 3. I'll start a new thread for that.
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Joshua Smith
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by Joshua Smith »

2loud4u wrote:I also took few extra worksheets with me to practice on. I would also be very interested in going to the next class as well. The only thing I was ever taught was go dive until you have about half left, or your buddy has about half left then turn. Any one that has ever dove with me will know I err on the side of caution and probably irritate some of my buddies by staying about a foot and a half away from them because I am not confident 100% if something went wrong and I am 15 feet away. I never struggled with any of my skills, but at the same time, I knew the drills were coming, and I knew the DM would help out if I had trouble.

The class last night sure opened my eyes to how many ways there are to plan a dive for gas management... I was thinking today though, as long as it took me to do the math last night in a nice dry warm classroom with a calculator and buddies all around to help, by the time I figure it out underwater, cold, and doing math in my head, my rock bottom time will be long past...
I'm glad you went. The best idea is to figure the dive out before you get in the water. "plan your dive, and dive your plan" is an old cliche, but a very good one. The "rule of thirds" works pretty well, in most cases, too. Anyway- dive with your eyes wide open, and keep learning.
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BDub
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by BDub »

2loud4u wrote:The class last night sure opened my eyes to how many ways there are to plan a dive for gas management... I was thinking today though, as long as it took me to do the math last night in a nice dry warm classroom with a calculator and buddies all around to help, by the time I figure it out underwater, cold, and doing math in my head, my rock bottom time will be long past...
Brendan, I'm glad the class helped you...

I want to point out, as Josh touched on, that anyone new to this should have no personal expectations of being able to do this stuff underwater. Like many other things in diving, it's a progression.

Start playing with the worksheet. Start planning your dives with the worksheet the day before, the night before, a few days before, etc (in other words, leave yourself plenty of time), but don't expect yourself to be able to do it underwater during the dive.

Eventually, after doing it on land enough, and seeing how it correlates underwater, it will start becoming intuitive. Pretty soon you'll find yourself doing some "scuba math" underwater, but there's no rush to get there.

Just get comfortable with the logic and the rest will eventually start coming naturally.
Last edited by BDub on Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Zen Diver
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by Zen Diver »

Sounder wrote:
LCF wrote:And at the risk of being an agent provcateur, for those of you who are asking yourselves, "What ELSE didn't they tell me?", the answer is, "Lots."
:goodpost:

Great post Lynne. One could write a BOOK about "what you don't know you didn't learn in OW."
Don't forget, most consumers have no desire to pay for a 2-3 month long OW class. OW is entry level. In fact, a lot of training is considered entry level. I know when I first became a nurse, in order to do anything in a critical care area one had to take a 4 month long post-RN course first, then be mentored by a seasoned pro for 6-8 weeks or more.

Sorry, I'm a bit tired and frustrated by the steady complaints of what OW doesn't cover, especially by non instructors. How about what OW does cover? It takes someone with no experience and allows them to discover freedom, peace and joy. It takes people who may be suffering from a variety of phobias, usually unknown to the instructor at the time, and helps them work through their past traumas so they can enjoy the underwater world. OW takes people from "what is this piece of equipment?"
to gear set up, breathing underwater, locomotion, the beginnings of buoyancy development, the beginnings of skill development etc. It is not meant to be all inclusive; if it were no one would be signing up for classes and as a result there would be no dive shops either.

Rant mode off. Back to school work (true learning never stops, in diving and life).

Valerie
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LCF
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by LCF »

I'm sure Brian went over this, or will in the Boot Camp, but none of this is really very precise, anyway. We make a lot of assumptions and round everything up for safety. So there isn't much reason (except for practice) to calculate the rock bottom for a 63 foot dive, as opposed to a 58 foot dive . . . What works very well is to choose a few "setpoints" and memorize the rock bottom volumes for those depths (I use 100 and 60). Then you can look at the tank you are using, and know what your "drop dead" pressure is at various depths during the dive.

Remember, the vast majority of this is gas PLANNING -- which means you do the vast majority of it before you ever get in the water. If you are having to do a bunch of calculations while you are underwater, it means something has gone significantly wrong, and most likely, there was a hole in the planning, too.

Oh, and Valerie, my comment was not meant as a blanket criticism of OW classes, as much as it was meant to be an encouragement to anybody who attended this workshop and found it enlightening, to continue to explore resources in the areas of dive technique, communication, and decompression. In all of those places, there is also much more to learn.
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scottsax
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by scottsax »

Zen Diver wrote:Don't forget, most consumers have no desire to pay for a 2-3 month long OW class. OW is entry level. In fact, a lot of training is considered entry level. I know when I first became a nurse, in order to do anything in a critical care area one had to take a 4 month long post-RN course first, then be mentored by a seasoned pro for 6-8 weeks or more.

Sorry, I'm a bit tired and frustrated by the steady complaints of what OW doesn't cover, especially by non instructors. How about what OW does cover? It takes someone with no experience and allows them to discover freedom, peace and joy. It takes people who may be suffering from a variety of phobias, usually unknown to the instructor at the time, and helps them work through their past traumas so they can enjoy the underwater world. OW takes people from "what is this piece of equipment?"
to gear set up, breathing underwater, locomotion, the beginnings of buoyancy development, the beginnings of skill development etc. It is not meant to be all inclusive; if it were no one would be signing up for classes and as a result there would be no dive shops either.

Rant mode off. Back to school work (true learning never stops, in diving and life).

Valerie
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spatman
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by spatman »

Zen Diver wrote:How about what OW does cover? It takes someone with no experience and allows them to discover freedom, peace and joy. It takes people who may be suffering from a variety of phobias, usually unknown to the instructor at the time, and helps them work through their past traumas so they can enjoy the underwater world. OW takes people from "what is this piece of equipment?" to gear set up, breathing underwater, locomotion, the beginnings of buoyancy development, the beginnings of skill development etc. It is not meant to be all inclusive; if it were no one would be signing up for classes and as a result there would be no dive shops either.
great post, val.
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Re: Free Gas Planning & Management Workshop

Post by selkie »

Val :smt038 :goodpost:
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