Kort kan man sige at man på Fundi kurset får værktøjerne til at dykke"
DIR-style" med vægt på tension, trim, buoyancy, balanced rig, finne
teknikker, s-drill og udstyrs konfiguration m.m.
Her er en god billedserie fra et dansk DIR-F kursus:
http://www.divepoint.dk/galleri/fundamental20040328.asp
På Tech1 kurset får man værktøjerne til at dykke Sammen "DIR-style" med vægt
på team planlægning, team positionering, team kommunikation med lys, team
problem løsning m.m.
Her er en rigtig god lang dagbogs beskrivelse fra et Tech1 kursus, som siger
meget mere end kursusplanen:
http://www.diveoz.com.au/discussion_forums/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=6663
Da DiveOz diskussions forum stadig er nede (og ikke kan finde artiklen andre
steder), tillader jeg mig at indsætte den her:
Ok, I'm bored and I didn't write one for Fundamentals, so here goes....
NOTE: Due to the sheer volume of information we had to take in during the
six days of the course I cannot always remember exactly what took place on
exactly what day, only what took place and what I learned, so this is
basically a summary rather than a day to day account. This article is
neither complete or neccesarily accurate and absolutely not guaranteed to
improve your diving.
The course is usually run over five days, but Guideon Liew likes to run his
over six days - thank god as I do not think we would have passed without the
extra day. Every day we started at around 0830 and finished no earlier than
1900. I think the latest we finished was about 2030. My girlfriend had
"never seen him [me] so tired."
The first two days were at Shelly Beach and followed the format of dry runs,
i.e. running through skills on land, and then four dives. The dry runs were
basically dealing with valve failures and line laying. The dives at Shelly
would be conducted with twins and no stages.
The GUE/DIR system recognizes nine different type of valve failures which
are basically a combination of a valve being fixable or non-fixable and
whether the diver has chosen the right valve to shut down or is basically
just confused. Briefly, the basic process is for the diver to listen to the
bubbles, shut down whichever valves s/he believes will stop the problem,
call a team member over to check, decide weather the dive can be continued
and decide whether you want to continue if it can, then the victim does a
flow check, i.e. working from right to left, make sure each valve that
should be off is off and each valve that should be open is open, and then
take appropriate action, i.e. end the dive ascend immediately, end the dive
but return to the starting point, e.g. anchor line or if you are in an
overhead environment, or continue the dive. Easy peasy? errm yah! More
later.
After discussing the various types and means of doing tie-offs, the three of
us ran a line around the trees. Looking very pleased with ourselves, Guideon
then asked us how many tie-offs we had done, what type, where and in what
order. We looked at each other and then him dumbly and shrugged, lesson
learned. We did, however, know that it had taken us about 2 minutes to lay
the line. Blindfolded, we followed it back. This was of course after Guideon
had placed other tie-offs near ours meaning that at every tie off we came
too we had to follow our line right around to make sure we were following
our line out, not someone elses line back in. Needless to say it took us
eighteen minutes to find our way back. Guideon then pointed out that if we
had been diving thirds we probably would not have made it back out. A very
sobering thought. Still, he pointed out that the fastest he has seen this
exercise done was in 8 minutes by people who were already GUE Cave 2
certified and dived together a lot. This is still not within 3rds, or
anywhere near, though. An even more sobering thought. The main point of the
lesson was that before attempting overhead you should have your skills,
namely trim, buoyancy and kicks, together enough so you do not kick up silt
in the first place. NOTE: Tech 1 is not an overhead course, they teach you
line work on Tech 1 primarily to get you started on it for when you do do an
overhead course.
The first dive of every day, not just Shelly, on the course was simply
descending to 6M or so and practicing the S-Drill - DIR-Speak for "air
sharing drill" - and valve drill - working from right to left turning each
valve off then on in turn - all of course while attempting to keep perfect
buoyancy and trim and then ascending as a team doing 1 minute stops every
meter to the surface starting at 6M with one team member running deco. Just
a quick note to any Fundamentals divers? Practice! Practice! Practice!
Having your fundamental skills down pat makes keeping together as a team a
LOT easier (in all honesty we should have done more practice, although one
was better than others - one was not me though unfortunately).
Much to my surprise I found the valve drill a lot harder than I am used to
because of my new drysuit. Guideon suggested that I do "the funky chicken"
before the dive and on descent so that the bulk of my drysuit and undersuit
is pushed above my hips and shoulders so that I have more flexibility in the
arms where it is needed which worked perfectly. If you are wondering what
the "the funky chicken" is, imagine a 70's disco dancer punching the sky?
not sure about how this goes when it come to Rule #6 (always look cool), but
hey? why break the habit of a lifetime. Having a visible bottom at Shelly
(fnar fnar) made keeping buoyancy easy enough.
Due to what I think was constant frog kicking I also experienced cramp for
the first time. Ouch.
The other three dives consisted of planning the dive using rule of thirds
(meaning using a reel) and then waiting for Guideon, to seize up every
mistake we made and punish us for it. This invariably meant us limping back
or ascending, as a team of course, with a less than ideal number of masks
and available gas supplies. Things like "oh the line has gone slack, lets
just reel it in then"?. "oh here comes the end"? "oh, how do we get out
now?"? "bugga!" (note: none of us are cave trained) and forgetting to do a
flow check after a valve failure would result in Guideon signaling that you
where out of gas a few minutes later. The funny thing about this is that
most of the problems were caused by mistakes we made ourselves not
manufactured by the instructor so the reality of it all hit home a lot more
than on previous courses I have done e.g. the line thing above was due to a
poor primary and no secondary tie-offs and the aforementioned OOG situation
because I had not done a flow check (therefore my failed post may have been
open causing gas loss).
We also spent one dive following the line back about 100M and ascending
without masks. OF course we tokk ages doing it highlighting again how dead
we would be in a zero viz situation in an overhead environment.
Working with lines highlight how good working in a team of three can be. For
instance, one diver can deal with the line whilst the other two are dealing
with an emergency.
When it comes to teamwork, generally, if in a team of three one person is
the captain, i.e. is responsible for navigation/line and making most of the
decisions, one person is nominated bag man and the other is in charge of
deco. This is dynamic, e.g. if the deco person loses his mask it is probably
best that someone else takes over this role, and if both other divers
strongly disagree with a decision taken by the captain, then the decision
may need to a little more thought.
GUE's policy is that simulated valve failures are conducted by the
instructor using an air gun coming of his own gas supply, so you are never
using your own gas supply for this. The main advantage of this is that he
can point the air gun at the part of the reg/valve/manifold system that has
failed giving a pretty realistic feel and sound to it all. GUE, being
American, is also remarkably PC. Guideon apologized profusely for the hand
signal he used to indicate that one of my teammates valves was ****ed, I
mean non-fixable.
For GUE/DIR rule of thirds means thirds after "minimum gas" (what used to be
known as rock bottom), which is essentially the amount of gas, needed to get
to the next source of gas (be that a stage or the surface) for two divers
with an SAC of 30L/m. If you do not need to get back somewhere, e.g. a drift
dive, non-overhead etc, then you can use all useable or rule of halves which
is your backgas minus minimum gas. When planning the dives you workout your
gas consumption in terms of bar every 5 minutes and round it to an easily
usable figure. So every 5 minutes you can easily check to see if your are on
or off track with your gas plan and this will also gives a good idea of what
your gas pressure is by looking at my bottom timer and without needing to
check your SPG. This links in rather nicely with deco planning, but more on
that later.
After the dives, it was back to the classroom for some video watching and
theory. What was interesting about watching the video is that all were
making excuses for this and that at the beginning of the course, but by the
end of the course we were not. The video, sometimes depressingly, never
lies. It really is the most invaluable of learning tools. My trim was
nowhere near as good as I thought (and had been told by others). I never
realized how much I went out of trim when I had to deal with an emergency. I
constantly forgot to tidy up my light cord when I clipped the head off and
our positioning in relation to each other was awful (I admit that I was
particularly bad on this one, well it's on video I can't deny it!) etc
The theory is basically all dive planning, deco planning, why this and that
rule etc etc.
There is a saying that if you are not onto stages by day three, then you are
not going to pass. Guideon was at pains to point out that it was not about
passing or failing but about learning at all times. Convinced we would be
back at Shelly and stage-less the next day I got home about 2000 and was
asleep by about 2100.
Day three, and to the genuine surprise of all of us, we were up in the
classroom first thing, learning about and setting up stages then Colours
Reef bound where our dives for the next three days would be.
Again the first dive of each day was S-Drills and valves drills although
from now on we would swap to our stage before ascending at 1 meter every
minute. We also had to do this without any reference to the bottom. This is
made easier if the team member not doing anything is used as a depth
reference. The stage swap procedures is basically (I await the flood of
emails correcting me),
1. Check depth
2. Check that the MOD marking on the stage is the same as your depth - or
more importantly you are not deeper.
3. Make sure that the reg is pressurized (so that when the second stage and
hose are pulled out the reg is not knocked into a funny position as well as
for the next step - personally I just check the reg is positioned correctly
and crank the valve on and off),
4. Remove reg and purge slightly whilst observing pressure gauge - if the
needle moves, the reg in your had is the right one.
5. Check depth again and if the correct depth?
6. Remove reg currently in mouth, place stage reg in mouth and clip off long
hose reg (if that is the one you were breathing of course otherwise is would
have been clipped off already).
This might seem a bit anal, particularly step 2 and if you only have one
stage, but one of GUEs philosophy is the law of primacy. The idea behind
this is to develop muscle memory so that when you have to do something you
do it instinctively. So, whilst we are using one stage now, when we come to
using two stages everything is a lot easier than it otherwise would be. The
same goes for trim, most of us in OW are taught all our skills kneeling on
the bottom of the pool therefore when we come to a situation a lot of us
have a tendency to assume an upright position, which is ok in open water,
but in a silty overhead is asking for trouble.
Another thing about diving with a stage is that it must be incorporated into
flow checks. I was suitably punished on one dive by having my stage removed
because I had not included it in a flow check after a fixable valve failure
earlier in the dive. The idea behind this was that as I had not checked, the
valve on my stage may well have been open and thus dribbling my gas away.
Although, I also learned that I should be very careful with my wallet around
Guideon - I had not noticed him remove my stage until I came to the gas
switch, admittedly I had been dealing with an OOG diver, but still?
Apparently he has not been caught by a student yet, we reckoned that to pass
the GUE IE they have to steal a stage from GI without him noticing. Still
made me feel like I had just realized I naked and standing in a public
place, you know those dreams? ooops wrong forum.
The following two dives each day were much the same as the dives at Shelly,
but obviously deeper at 25-30M which increased the urgency of resolving any
problems and also meant that if the magical gas or mask stealing shark came
along you had a lot more time to the surface. Planning was also more
important and very real.
Invariably we would end up in the situation where one of us would be
maskless, another out of gas etc. On one dive, one of us had lost his mask
and I was looking after him by keeping in contact with him and making sure
he stopped at the right depth and ascended at the right time. The gas
stealing shark suddenly appeared and I was instantly out of gas so went to
the other team member to get gas. Discussing this afterwards I was asked
"why?" by Guideon. Really I should have got my gas from the mask-less diver
because now all three of us where inseparable, or rather we had no team
member that was not dealing with an immediate emergency. Food for thought.
Another thing that happened that I took a big note of on one dive was when a
teammate's primary light failed (for real - flat battery, doh!). So he
swapped to a backup. He had used an oring to attach his clip, which promptly
broke. No worries, until Guideon saw it and swooped down on us like a
vulture on to an easy meal. I get passed the torch because the owner needed
to deal with a valve problem. I think about putting it in my pocket, but
don't want to risk losing it, but then I need both hands to deal with
something else, so I pass it off to someone else... and on it goes like a
hot coal setting fire to everything it touches. Of course, in a real
accident you would just leave it, but it did highlight to us how just
something small like a broken clip could help to turn problems into more
serious problems. And again, it was the instructor taking advantage of a
situation we had got ourselves into, not one he invented.
There is always talk about the DIR "on the fly" approach to deco, but you
aren't going to get much out of me on it. Why? Well aside from the potential
of litigation from "Simon said it on the internet and now I am in a wheel
chair", it is so interlinked in the use of standard gasses and in dive
planning DIR/GUE style, that it will not really work outside of the context
of DIR. So if you are interested you may as well just drink the purple
koolaid and be done with it. However, it is all based around ratios between
bottom time and deco time with adjustments made for depth and with various
rules on how your deco time should be allocated depending on what happens,
if you lose a gas etc. It is not even remotely similar to a very big post
made on another diving web site that begins with D and ends with P. It is
actually surprisingly easy, especially when combined with the 5 min block
approach of gas planning. With this approach it is not that dive computers
are the work of satan, it is just that they are completely unnecessary. It
gives me a lot of confidence that all I need to know is my max depth, bottom
time and what gas I am breathing and I can work out what deco I need to do
in my head (within limits - but these are the limits I dive within anyway).
The other thing is deep stops. (I will expect emails of correction) The idea
is that say for a 20 minute dive at 30M, you slow tissues are not going to
be particularily loaded, however your fast tissue will be. Studies have
apparently shown the formation of bubbles fairly early on in the ascent so
you need to stop and let these offgas normally. Blood circulation takes
about 2 minutes, but as we are only worried about the venious side it is
about one minute. So, we ascend to the depth just above where bubbles start
forming and then wait for 1 minute so they are removed by the blood and
lungs - the "shower of bubbles" thing DIR NET divers go on about. This is
how the whole idea of removing time from shallow stops and and adding it to
deep stops came about - although this is not really how it is done. The net
effect is that on dives with short bottom times, including recreational
dives, you may well be better off doing just deep stops rather than bolting
to 5M and staying there as long as you can as it is your fast tissues
bubbling away and extended shallow stops are not going to help that much.
Act on this information at your own peril though.
The shallow stops are there to deal with the slow tissues so if you do say
60 mins at 30M long shallow stops are very important, but you MUST still do
the deep stops.
It is of course pointed out that nobody really knows what is going on with
deco, so you do it at your own risk.
By the end of day 4 we had taken the hint that our teamwork, quite frankly,
sucked and realised that unless we did something about it we were not going
to pass. The fact that we had not really dived together before was
irrelevent as teamwork is probably the most important thing in DIR
philosophy. On day five we did the same thing as on the previous 2 days, but
concentrated on the teamwork thing i.e. positioning ourselves so that we can
see each other easily at any time, responding to things more quickly,
pointing out light cords that were dangling etc. You do feel a bit like
school kids being herded on a school trip, but once you get over that and
start getting used to it and the pressure is on because of a few simulated
failures and missing bit of gear you realise the benefits of it.
At the end of day 5 we were, again genuinely, surprised to hear that we were
going to head to Long Reef and the Coolooli the next day. We had not passed
yet, but at least we had not failed.
So, day 6, off we go to The Coolooli, a wreck in 36-49M which I have dived
probably around 20 times. I was team captain so would be leading. We were
going to use all usable to plan our dive and do a 20 minute bottom time. So
we discuss the dive and what we are going to do deco wise and in what we
plan to accomplish while we are down there. We descend... pressure on...
this is make or break... Bastard anchor is off the wreck. We swim around a
bit and then find it (well Guideon did and signalled us over.. ok!). Come 10
mins I signal that we should continue the dive and send up a bag, even
though we had agreed to come back to the anchot (being more experienced in
deep diving I knew the anchor whould not be there), the other two disagreed
so we head back and, of course don't find the anchor, end up going back to
the wreck and going up on a back, but after losing 5 minutes bottom time.
During the debrief, the other got a little ticking off from Guideon about
not following their team leader (respect my authoretay!) with regards to the
decision to swim back to the anchor, but then turned around and wiped off my
smug grin by telling me that as team captain I should have covered what we
are going to do in this sort of situation when I was briefing the team (oh
well, should have known). The teamwork thing again.
Anyway, I'm on the sixth page of my WP so may as well stop here as I could
keep writing about the course forever... a lot happens in 6 long days and 18
dives. I may add more in the future. Suffice to say, we all passed, just. We
all have lots to work on, but know what we need to work on. Video rocks as a
learning tool, but can be depressing sometimes.
Guideon is an excellent instructor and if I am honest and do not attempt to
avoid politics I learned more from him then I have from any other
instructor. The fact that he spent about two years following Andrew
Georgitsis around the world during his internship, at his own expense and on
a dive professionals wage, says a lot about his commitment to dive
education. He is not born and bred GUE either, so understands divers coming
from the mainstream agencies.
The course cost me $1795, which is a lot of money. If you consider that it
is more or less as the equivalent of nitrox, advanced nitrox, deco and
normoxic trimix (and more) and that the ratio of students to instructor
cannot exceed 3:1 it is actually pretty good value in any terms. GUE fix the
cost of Tech 1 at US$650. This is for the instructor. Gas, boats, class
room, contributions towards intructors costs are extra and arranged
independently of this. The only prerequistes are OW and DIR Fundamentals.
Edited by - Simon on 07 June 2004 7:34:07 PM
"Allan Jensen" <alj@vrag.dk> wrote in message
news:4278a3f9$0$647$edfadb0f@dread16.news.tele.dk...
> Man må godt nok håbe, at i bliver rigtigt dygtige til at dykke bagefter,
> med
> den kursuspris.
>
> Hvad lærer man på sådanne kurser?
>
> mvh. Allan Jensen