Hi all,

Thanks to the help of our friend Regent's Park, the Scuba podcast is up and ready for a good listen!

Check it out and enjoy the blog post that goes along with it!

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

Thanks Jamie and Sandy for allowing me to contribute!

Interesting... First got certified in 1976 and have been planning on updating my training, Great motivation...

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Pyrat
Reflections in a double bourbon...

I see the article but can't find the podcast?

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Serge Gorodish

(As Doc Brown would say: The way I see it, if you're going to [do whatever it is that you're doing now], why not do it with a little style?)

http://countryoftheblind.blogspot.com

great job! and i agree with Pyrat... made me want to pull out the scuba equipment again

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The most interesting people in the world are those who know everything, and those who know absolutely nothing.

Sorry guys - Guess I was still figuring out the BJB backend a bit. Now I have it - the podcast IS on the Podcast page.

Thanks for sticking with us while I hammer through all this!

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

Jamie and Solitaire, outstanding job. Very much enjoyed your first podcast on SCUBA diving.

Two things I thought of while listening, first, the comments about resort certifications and diving to 30 feet (2 atmospheres). There are still dangers breathing regulated air at shallow depths. Keep in mind, what a regulator does is match the volume of air inhaled to the atmospheric pressure at the depth you are. This means you inhale twice the volume of air at 30 feet you do at the surface. If you inhale deeply and surface from 30 feet or even shallower depths without exhaling, you are going to seriously damage (rupture) your lungs. Watch your bubbles and note how they expand as they get nearer the surface. The same thing happens with your lungs, so from 30 feet your would expand your lungs by double their capacity at the surface. Rule of thumb is to blow bubbles as you surface and never pass your bubbles. I'm not really a fan of resort certs for reasons like this and while I may be wrong on this, I believe these certs require you dive with an instructor who is responsible for keeping track of the tadpoles.

Second, on weights and wet-suits, I always go light regarding weight. Your primary safety device is your wet-suit which will float if you drop your weight belt or really just enough weight to achieve positive buoyancy, even without the use of a Buoyancy Compensation, or Buoyancy Control Device (BCD). You will need to power down for the first 15 to 30 feet in order to compress the air pockets in the wet-suit material but after that you will achieve neutral or negative buoyancy. I use to find a flat rock and stick it in my weight belt, then drop the rock once I was at a depth where I was buoyancy neutral, but this may be politically incorrect now days. This also meant I did not have to expend air on the BCD which I really didn't need as a safety device, but if I did want to use it on the surface to help me float I could manually inflate it.

You have got me all excited about updating my cert, can't wait for the weather to warm up...

Regarding Joe's exit line, I reviewed a number of Joe's podcats and there really wasn't a standard exit line. Joe would sometime say, "This is your buddy (or sometimes he'd say good buddy), Head of Section signing off (or out)." sometimes in the earlier ones he'd just "See you next time"

Looking forward to your next podcast...

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Pyrat
Reflections in a double bourbon...

Thanks, pyrat. We have a couple more episodes in production (for which we're recorded all the content already) and I can tell that we're getting more of a system/rapport down as we get more practice. It's working out well thus far! I tend to agree here. Scuba seems to be an activity that you need to digest, reinforce over time, and more. I think the constant drilling that I did when I did my cert over a couple months of weekend classes was VERY valuable. When we hopped into the quarry for our qualifying dives, there was literally no problem for anyone in the class, even those who weren't as comfortable in the water as I. Again, totally agree. Though I will point out that the first time I did a salt-water dive, I had a hell of a time actually descending because of the difference in buoyancy between fresh and salt water. I needed more weight than I had - even though I'd upped the amount that I normally used per the PADI recommendations. I like your idea of using a rock to get down to where the real buoyancy test should begin...of course, I also wouldn't want to drop it and destroy coral (perhaps this is the PC issue you meant?). Yeah, I want to get back in the water and do some work as well. Perhaps it's time for me to take the refresher course... I decided to just go with the "keep living like James Bond" as Joe had started saying toward more recent episodes. A couple people pointed that phrase out to me after the first podcast.

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

You did such a great job, I totally agree, you should make these podcasts your own.

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Pyrat
Reflections in a double bourbon...

Thanks!

Honestly, it's sort of a tough call. Yeah, I'm not Joe, and I'm never going to be. I'm not going to try to make the podcasts be unnaturally like his, outside of format and organization (and sound clips). But at the same time, this is his show, his website, and his product. I'm just helping out.

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

Personally, I'm not a fan of the resort certifications. I liked going for six weeks, once a night with a NAVY frogman. I took a check-out course/dive at a resort for my honeymoon 11 years ago and felt even that was rushed.

Slowly working my way through the podcasts. Glad to hear you all back up! Started this one last night and am really enjoying it. Looking forward to the others!


On a slightly related side note, SCUBA certification does come in handy to save money. I need to do some work on my pool this Spring and the local pool company/service was trying to sell me on their service.

Me: "I can make these changes myself."
Salesman: "It's challenging to stay down there."
Me: "I have a weight belt."
Sales: "You'll need to breathe."
Me: "I'm PADI certified. I've gone down to 80 feet with sharks. I think I can handle five feet in my swimming pool."

Should take me about an 30 minutes to swap out a couple of return covers and remove a stain in the plaster. Should save me about $300 to pay someone. Plus, my daughter has expressed interest in SCUBA diving, so it'll be a good learning experience for her. Always good to start the safety lessons early!

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“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.” - from Casino Royale