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> A long time ago you said you felt that a person needed a minimum of > 100 hours on the MK-5 to be able to be remotely "safe", and even then > they're serious babes in the woods.. I don't think I ever said it that strongly (e.g., "remotely", "babe in the woods", etc.) It really depends on the individual diver. The learning curve starts to plateau somewhere between 50-75 hours, but 100 hours allows additional time and is a good umbrella number to use, and is the number I would recommend for serious balls-to-the-walls cave diving. Of course, the learning curve never really plateaus totally - it keeps on climbing. It's just that after about 50-75 hours or so, it climbs a lot more gradually. > Is this still the case? Or is it now the case that you can do a 2 > week course and be ready to do mixed gas exploration at 100m? Two weeks doesn't mean anything. What matters is hours on the machine. However, most people cannot fit 50-100 hours of diving within the span of two weeks, unless they are truly dedicated. > The impetus for the question comes from the December 22nd update for > the Wa-Too expedition which has this quote, > > "John and Andrew took off work for 4 months to join the Wakulla 2 > project and arrived on September 15, 1998 expecting to train on the > MK5s for two weeks before the kickoff date." > > It implies to me they felt that two weeks of training was all they > needed before the kickoff date of the project.. Well, first of all, there are 336 hours in 14 days. Even taking a third of those hours for sleep, and another third of those hours for working on equipment, it's not impossible to fit the requisite number of hours in that span. But that point aside, there's nothing stopping them from adding additional hours in the basin during the initial phase of the project. That would be a much better training scenario anyway, since you'd have the same basic environment and logisitics that you'd have for the exploration dives later in the project, so the trianing can be specific to the task at hand. If you look over the updates, you'll see that the divers have thus far spent a lot of time on the rebreathers in the basin, doing simulations and rehersal dives. I know some other members of the WKPPG are fond of criticizing the fact that they haven't done any hard-core exploration dives yet. I find this ironic, since that criticism essentially says "why bother doing the requisite training and rehersal hours in the basin - they should be doing hard-core exploration dives already". Thus, it would seem that you and some other WKPPG members are at odds with each other on how you feel they should proceed. For what it's worth, I tend to side with you: they should build the additional hours in the basin before doing serious exploration dives. Fortunately, that's what they seem to be doing. Hope that helps answer your question. > Any word on that tape? As I told you before, I'll send it as soon as I get permission from the other participants - some of whom are away for the holidays. Aloha, Rich P.S. I'm tired of getting a zillion bounced messages everytime I post something to cavers, so I'll let you forward this message on to that list. Richard Pyle Ichthyology, Bishop Museum deepreef@bi*.or* 1525 Bernice St. PH: (808) 848-4115 Honolulu, HI 96817-2704 FAX: (808) 847-8252 -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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