Hogarthian Divers - DIR diving - Doing It Right - Diver

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Hogarthian Divers taking diver education as a Hogarthian (DIR) friendly group that’s centered in Bratislava of Slovakia, but we dive all over the world and our courses are build up using our extensive training and education program with a distinctive Hogarthian style that emphasizes continuous learning and feedback. Our aim is to give you the highest quality education by integrating our extensive knowledge and real life experiences.

Hogarthian Divers represents dedicated divers, educators, and explorers. For individuals seeking high quality diver training, they provide a rigorous, demanding and comprehensive curriculum. They believe that only a rigorous and thorough program will ensure that divers have the requisite abilities and knowledge to respond to the challenges of what can be an unforgiving environment.

The Hogarthian (D.I.R.) system evolved out of the exacting demands of the world's most extreme exploration diving, yet the approach has rapidly gained favor among all levels of divers. It is important to think of the Hogarthian (DIR) Diving System as a holistic equipment approach. Each of the components is designed to work together to form the whole. Everyone benefits from a system that makes the underwater experience safer and more comfortable. The Hogarthian (DIR) system is much more than an equipment configuration. It is a diving style that ensures every aspect of each dive represents safety, fun and efficiency.

What is it?

The surface marker buoy (or SMB) is an essential piece of equipment which allows a dive team to mark their position either on the surface or underwater.

Before I begin any discussion of the specific gasses I chose for GUE I want to reiterate a few aspects to standard gas selection. I recognize that this may appear to be old hat but some of the concerns seem best answered in this format. Please recognize that the constituents of a particular set of standard mixes are less important than the utility of standard mixes in general. In other words you can always find a "better" mix at a given depth; this is also true for a range of depth segments.

By Greg Flanagan
In 1979 cave diving was still very much in its infancy and as a junior at the University of Florida, I was privileged to be taking the first cave diving course offered by the newly formed NSS Cave Diving Section, taught by none other than Sheck Exley.
The serious cave rigs of that period included double 104s worn with a Navy harness or a simple three strap harness, both of which consisted only of stainless steel tank bands and webbing. There rigs were used in connection with a belly-bag BC for buoyancy control.

Updated Pre-Dive Checklist

G - Goals - What do you want to do? Whats the plan?
U - Unified Team - Who does what? what order?
E - Equipment - Have had two different instructors do slightly different
things. One does the equipment matching check here. The other just goes
over any specialized equipment needs. i.e. Reels, scooters, cameras and the
like.

BY TAMARA KENDEL

Good trim requires that a diver move through the water in a horizontal position with the feet up. Most divers swim in a foot-down position using a kick that gives downward thrust. This attitude increases the surface area of the diver that must be pushed through the water, which requires more energy and increases air consumption. Also, much of the downward thrust caused by the kick is effort wasted against poor buoyancy control-- part of the kick must compensate for the diver’s lack of neutral buoyancy. It is also crucial to realize that the feet-down position will lead to dead coral, bad visibility and damaged cave, all of which should be important issues for divers.

1/ Stabilize the convulsing diver. Control her position in the water column by making physical contact (either with her person or a piece of equipment.) Do not ascend while she is in shock and convulsing.
2/ Do your best to hold the regulator in her mouth (certainly the gas she is breathing MAY be causing the convulsions, and the ideal action would be to have the stricken diver breathe from YOUR gas supply; however, breathing any gas is better than breathing water).

The purpose of the valve drill in a training scenario is to familiarize the diver with the proper use of the valves on their manifold and to prepare them to deal with some of the failures that might occur during the dive.

In addition, valve drills are made part of every dive that we do. This is to ensure several important things:

The diver can reach their valves
The valves are in the correct position (i.e., "on")
The valves are moveable (not jammed)

When diving, your wing needs only enough lift to compensate for the weight of your breathing gas plus the compression of your exposure suit at depth. Those using suits which don't compress much, such as dive skins or drysuits made of trilaminate or crushed neoprene, will also want some extra lift in order to be able to float comfortably on the surface. And of course the whole rig needs to float by itself if you doff it at the surface.

The use of bungied/bondage wings is strongly discouraged. To start with, one of the primary reasons stated for their use is that they streamline your rig. Ironically, they generally do the exact opposite. Hydrodynamics dictates that rough surfaces create increased turbulence which consequently increases drag. The bungies create a very rough surface and thus are adding to drag. Furthermore the bungies have a tendency to trap air which cause both static and dynamic instability issues.

By Jarrod Jablonski
1) Dive computers tend to induce significant levels of diver dependences, eliminating the awareness so common and essential to all diving but particularly obvious when diving tables
2) Dive computers do not allow proper planning as divers can't properly "study" the impact of various mixture and decompression choices.