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Hello Ted; You've made some interesting points and I am not going into each one of them. However, I and 4 other members of the Hydronautics team took the DIR Fundamentals class with Andrew as well. There were six more people from Village Divers (dive shop) in New York and we were doing the entire class in two teams with two different sessions. In the Hydronautics group, we had one 2man team and one 3 men/women team. Michael Kane and Andrew were alternating in the in-water instructions. You are describing a scenario of 10 students/ONE instructor as a regular occurrence: that is wrong. The harrassment techniques under water were nothing special, but a surprise when you don't expect that, while doing your OOA drill your mask is being removed and you have to deal with it. The last point I would like to make is that this course is not designed to TEACH technical diving (you can also participate in your single AL 80 and Zeagle Ranger (or whatever), as long as you have for the instruction the 7 ft hose and necklaced backup reg. This course is supposed to provide you with the fundamental skills to practise until you are solid enough to take the TECH 1 course and getting the most out of your money (because you know already what they are looking for in specific skills.) So, I understand that you don't want to waste money on a 10 students/One instructor "crash-course", but you can check with Andrew or MHK to get into a scenario where you are participant in a small group. Give it a shot. Best regards Udo Ted Green wrote: > > To all, > The final points. > > 1. An instructor needs to evaluate the students basic skill levels and correct deficiencies before attempting to teach new material. As was demonstrated by this class, a student's basic skills are not always what the're advertised to be. > > 2. Handicapping student's equipment, harassment techniques, and 3 man buddy teams have no place on dive #1 ( if you must do them at all ) because of point #1. If you have no first hand experience with a particular diver in the water, why would you put them in a more difficult or dangerous situation if you don't know whether they are prepared to handle it. > > 3. Three man teams, while certainly doable in some / most diving situation, are more difficult than two man teams until your team gets good at it. This is a skill that needs to be learned with above water instruction and underwater practice. Just as with a reel, you don't tell your students,"here it is, jump in the water and give it a shot". If you disagree with this then explain why in the recreational diving world a disproportionately high number of 3 buddy teams fail ( one diver gets separated from the other two). Answer: they were never trained as a team to do it properly, and they lack the discipline to make it work. Learning the three man buddy team is not something you should be doing while fighting your shrink wrapped drysuit and doing gas shut down drills. Which brings me to point #4. > > 4. I really have to question how smart it is to cram all this stuff into a weekend dive course with 10 students and 1 instructor. With a 90% failure rate........ or should I say 90% still in training, this doesn't speak well for a dir fundamentals course. You may be surprised to find that I don't hold this against Andrew. The last course I took was a rebreather course from Errol Kalayci ( a gue instructor ) in 1998. My out of pocket for the week, travel, accommodations, meals, training, and diving was over $2,000. I think the tuition alone was over $900. Three of us spent 5 intense days learning and diving the Halcyon rebreather. This is the way to learn Technical diving! It infuriates me that people are willing to spend thousands / tens of thousands of dollars on dive gear and diving and yet think they are accomplishing something by being in a class of 10 spending $300 each, for a weekend and think they are going to learn this stuff. > > For the last few days I have been reading e-mails from the participants of this class who failed. Almost all hold Andrew in high regard and think he is a great instructor. Several told of how Andrew made them realize they were an accident waiting to happen. To them I respond, > > WHY HAS NOT ONE OF YOU LOOSERS SAID," I'M GOING TO GO SPEND A COUPLE OF THOUSAND DOLLARS, A WEEK WITH ANDREW, AND LEARN TO DO IT RIGHT SO I DON'T KILL MYSELF." > > 5. To those of you who have invited to come to a weekend dir fundementals course for $275 with 9 other people, I say," forget it! If I ever take this course I'll pack my bags grab a fist full of hundred dollar bills, head to Florida for at least a week, pay for private instruction or not more than 4 students to one instructor and DO IT RIGHT." The best way to learn technical diving is to take the course and then spend 4 or five days straight doing it. When it comes to time with the instructor, I won't settle for 10%. I want all of it, or at least 25% over several days. It's sad when a "stroke" like me takes his diving instruction far more seriously than you "dir wanna bees". > > I'm out of here for a few days, so no more e-mails for a while. If you want to argue the points, e-mail George. I'm pretty sure he will agree with me on most of this. > > Ted Green ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dive Charter Boat: O.C. Diver Sunset Marina in Ocean City, Maryland http://www.ocdiver.com 410.742.1992 800.637.2102 Fax 410.749.9410 "Diving the Atlantic coast from Cape May NJ to Cape Charles VA." -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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