UTD's Essentials of Side Mount Diving class is designed for recreational divers who want to cross over to dive mount diving and use a double cylinders configuration. Essentials of Side Mount will cross a recreational diver at their current recreational level and is the prerequisite for a diver who wants to continue onto UTD's Rec 2 and/or 3 in a side-mount configuration

Like all the UTD Essentials classes, Essentials of Side Mount Diving is a personal skills class. In other words, while the student is introduced to personal and team skills, emergency skills are presented in a training situation, as opposed to a surprise, critical skills situation.
 

Prerequisites

• Must meet UTD General Course Prerequisites as outlined in Section 1.6

• Minimum age of 18

• Standard gases are used. Nitrox and/or Helium certification required if breathing any gas with higher O2 content than 22% and/or using a helium based mix.

Course Content

Training is based on a minimum of three days and includes a minimum of eight hours of gear configuration and academics, three hours of dry runs and at least four in-water dives. These must be a combination of demonstration/critical skills and experience dives. Additional training and dives are at the discretion of the instructor and are based on the level of training the student is seeking.

Course Limits

• General Training Limits as outlined in Section 1.4

• All dives are to maintain a working PO2 of no greater than 1.4

• UTD Z-System Side-Mount configuration

• Student to instructor ratio maximum 3:1 during in-water sessions.

Online Classroom Courses and Text

• Online Classroom Materials - Essentials of Side-Mount Diving

• Overhead Side-Mount Worksheet

• Essentials of Side-Mount Diving DVD is recommended

Academic Topics

• UTD organization

• Side-Mount Diving Principles

• Side-Mount theory as it applies to recreational diving

• Theory of independent doubles

• Diving proficiency with in water skills

• Buoyancy control and trim

• Streamlining and equipment configuration

• Propulsion techniques

• Air sharing and valve procedures

• Situational awareness

• Communication

• Gear configuration

• Breathing gas overview

• Dive planning and gas management

Land Drills and Topics

• Dive team protocols

• Setup and Configuration of the Z-System

• Gas sharing drills

• Equipment fit and function

• Propulsion techniques

• Setup and configuration of multi-cylinder Side Mount system.

• Multiple cylinder gas management

• Simulated failures of the stage bottles

• Simulated failures of the distribution block

• Simulated failure of the drive hose connection

• Pre-dive drills

Required Dive Skills and Drills

• All skills and drills as outlined in the general diving skills as outline in Section 1.5

• All skills requirements of requested crossover level as outlined by UTD Class structure

• Emergency out of gas management

• Demonstrate the ability to deploy and retrieve guideline

• Demonstrate good buoyancy and trim

• Demonstrate proficiency with Basic 6 skills while configured in a Side Mount system

• Non-silting propulsion techniques

• Familiarization with Side Mount configuration and equipment

• Multiple cylinder gas management

• Demonstration and practice with unclipped drive hose failure

• Demonstration and practice with distribution block failure

• Demonstration and practice with gas switch failures

Equipment Requirements
Side Mount equipment configuration is designed to be simple and efficient. To get the most from your class, the course is taken in a complete UTD Z-system Side Mount system.

Required Equipment

• All equipment noted in paragraph 3.0

• Complete UTD Z-System (with manifold, QC6, etc)

• Appropriate multiple AL80 stage bottles with appropriate Side-Mount rigging