Any Other SCUBA Divers on the Forum?

[Capn Morgan]

Managed to do PADI open water and advanced in '06. Been diving a bit every year. Just got two new tanks for the boat and looking for a new compressor to be totally self-sufficient on that front next year. Planning my Dive Master in March or April.

[captainstubbie]

Been diving since '77. Anchors found pay for tank refills. :-)

[DivingOtter]

Originally Posted by Roy M

Got mine in high school in 1960. Later recertified in 1964 while at UCLA. Then got to be a support diver for Operation Sealab, and got a chance to hang with Cousteau and Phillipe. Then certified with USC to work at the Catalina Marine Science Center in the early '80s. Now I need to recertify because my old paper cards with no numbers don't hack it with dive shops to fill my tanks. You go with the flow.

Nice Kirby-Morgan DivingOtter.

You should see the new one I got. Brand new KM37SS. After my FIRST DIVE on it she began to rust! I mean RUST within 10 mins of reaching the surface. Kirby Morgan sent a hat to my dealer as a loaner while they figure out what is wrong with it. However I am more than pissed. 7300 dollars for a Stainless Steel hat that is rusting and has metal flakes chipping off. Wonder if i should have just gone with a fiberglass shell ...

[DivingOtter]

PS. Im lucky that hat didnt kill me. Someone did a half assed gelcoat job only to reveal the damage to the fiberglass shell. I dove that thing down 60 feet and had no clue until someone said " are you seriously diving that?!" come to find out a disgruntled employee smashed her intentionally and my then boss just had it re gelcoated. Needless to say I left that company..

[Amapola]

We've been diving 20+ years and usually just get refills wherever we dive. I do carry a Brownie on the boat as a backup and for cleaning the bottom.

[barnakiel]

Military trained ex scuba here. No longer dragging any hardware along so just free diving and snorkeling these days. Next outing this weekend. In LOVE with all things underwater - anemones and seaweed and sirens too ... ;-)

barnakiel

[Matt sachs]

Open water certified in 06 my instructors # was 2357 (SSI)
Became an open water insturctor in 2009 my number is 53057 (SSI)
Speciality instructor certified in deep , stress/rescue, nitrox, night, navigation , computers and some others
Technical certified in advanced deco and normoxic mix in 2011
Rebreather certified this year.

[Tellie]

My first instructor was Mike Kevorkian. I thought he was the fastest man under water at the time. A legend.

[cfarrar]

You got your cert at age 15?... You would be the 1st person I have heard about besides myself to be certified younger than their twenties.

I initially learned from my father, who began diving in 1956. He and a few friends dove RMS Rhone in 1958 or 1959. He pulled Mary Jo Kopechne from Teddy's car in 1969. He began teaching me to dive when I was 12, and I earned my PADI Open Water when I was 14. So did my sisters.

[Tori]

PADI instructor and Master Scuba Diver Trainer since 2003 got certified in 2001 currently have over 2000 dices get more every weekend :-)

[Matt sachs]

We train 3 age groups. 7-10year olds (scuba Rangers) , 11-15 year olds (junior open water), and 15 and up (open water divers). The 7-10 year olds are limited to 12 feet and must be with an instructor at all times. The students that learn the quickest and do the best with their skills are the 11-15year old group. We limit them to 40 feet but their training is exactly the same as the adults. I'm always amazed how fast the kids learn.

[pbiJim]

I used to do a lot of diving, but not so much any more. I think that my oldest C-card is probably from the early 80's. My newest card has a picture glued to it, & was hand typed cardboard that was then laminated.

Somewhere I should still have an old Dacor double hose regulator with adjustable venturi & my first single hose rig, which was a cousteau-gagnon aqua lung with a pop pin pressure gauge. I miss the old Princeton Techtonics bottom timers. I wish that I could still get rebuild kits for them. I tend to trust things that are rock simple, the way that they were.

When my wife took a class to get certified, I tried to help her study. I quizzed here about numbers on the dive table off the top of my head. After I told here that she was wrong several times, I went to show her how to look things up & found that the numbers had changed. The sport tables are no longer based on the Navy tables. The sport numbers are more conservative now. Since I have over 30 years experience & over 600 dives with no bad bottom-time-related experience, I still dive on the same Navy tables that I have always used.

[pbiJim]

Originally Posted by mbianka

hookah is still fun without having to put on all the SCUBA gear and then try and walking around on a pitching deck.

I've done a lot of diving off of small boats. I've even dove off of a sunfish once or twice. In order to avoid the hassles of all that gear while on deck, I often just inflate the BC, attach the weights to it & toss the whole rig into the water ahead of me, then get dressed after I hop in behind it.

[pbiJim]

Originally Posted by Captain Bill

The PADI program seemed to be mostly oriented towards keeping the dive shops selling stuff than it was keeping you alive in the water. Now PADI is about the only option out there.

Standard joke in my parts - PADI = pay another dollar in.

[Kiwi303]

PADI Rescue diver...

Haven't dived for a few years now tho, up in the mountains of the south island with no boat and in the middle of china is a bit more problematic to go diving than when living in Hamilton closer to the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel. The southern waters are too cold for my northern wetsuit, Or I'm just a pussy wimp who needs to harden up :P