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Am I the only one who switched from hand signals to a through-water comms unit last year
Honestly I ran hand signals on every shallow job for my first 6 years, just figured that's how it's done. Last spring on a pier job in Baltimore we had a dive watch who could not read my signals through the silt, so we broke out a used OTS unit the shop had sitting in a locker. The difference on that first dive was night and day, I could talk to the tender and the supervisor at the same time instead of waiting on a tug. Now I won't touch a job past 30 feet without comms, even though the old guys give me grief about it. The one thing that got me was the mask swap, took me about 4 dives to stop feeling like my face was being squeezed. Anyone else make the jump, and did you keep hand signals as a backup or just go full voice?
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wyatt5132h ago
The mask swap" is the part nobody warns you about and it's the real reason guys quit on comms. Most people blame the gear or the cost, but it's that first week of your face getting squeezed by a full face mask that makes guys go back to hand signals. Spend the money on a mask that actually fits your face before you blame the comms unit.
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