Underwater Navigation Part 1

one of the key elements in underwater navigation and being successful at it is making sure that you have the proper equipment and training to do that today we're going to take a look at several different compasses and we're gonna start a series on underwater navigation and hopefully it'll help you when you're trying to navigate underwater [Music] what's up guys this round again from leg kick or scuba marina and today is going to be the start of a series on underwater navigation and primarily we're going to be focusing on kompis navigation not so much on natural or line navigation but kompis navigation so what we're going to do to start this series out is we're gonna look at several different compasses here I'm going to show you how they attach to your equipment and the proper usage of that compass based off how it attaches to you we're also going to be looking at the features of a compass and then later on in this series we're going to take you over to the pool we're going to show you how we personally train our students here and then to end the series out we're going to take you out on an actual open water dive and take everything that we've learned from this video the second video and we're going to put it into a real-life scenario and I'm gonna take you on an underwater navigational dive and show you just how simple it actually is so let's take a real quick look at several different compasses and look at the features of each and then I'll show you how to set them up on your equipment all right so let's take a closer look at each different style of compass and I'll talk a little bit about how you operate them or how you attach them to you while diving the first one that we're gonna look at of course is just a standard consult mount compass now a lot of times you'll see this on say a 2 or 3 gauge console where you may have a pressure gauge a depth gauge and a compass or in this particular situation we simply got a pressure gauge in a compass these are actually very popular say for recreational divers or resort divers where they're only diving in the tropics and they don't want to take a lot of extra gear well the cool thing about this is is you're never going to leave your compass at home because it is attached to your rake system probably a little bit more popular than that or the wrist style compasses and they come in several different forms this is just a standard wrist strap here this is an excess scuba combo unit here and of course you can get it like the ones I prefer they actually have the bungee straps now the cool thing about the bungee straps I can either run it of course up on my wrist if I want to just like I could with this or I can actually maneuver it down to my hand and just kind of spotter my fingers through it and I can wear it on my wrist now a lot of times in one of my dry suits because I got big old thick gloves here or rings for my glove system I will actually wear it on my hand primarily in a wetsuit I'm actually going to pull it up on my wrist but it gives you a couple of different options with the bungee and it also makes it easier to get it on and off and to adjust because it's going to be depth compensating with that bungee system now the next one that we're going to look at is practically the exact same wrist style compass but it's broke down to its individual components this one comes from XS Google of course and it's got these little slots here in the side that will actually fit fix the wrist strap to it now if you decide that you don't want it on the wrist strap maybe you do want to own a console or a hose system this makes it very easy to attach because it comes with a little hose clamp and basically what the hose clamp does is it just snaps up over the top of your hose whatever hose you want to put it on and then those sleeves where your wrist strap goes through actually snaps down on place and that way it allows you to mount it to any type of poker system out there the next one that we're gonna look at is the same compass once again but we're going to look at how do you attach it say to a slate or say a retractor system we can still use the exact same little sleeves here where the wrist strap goes through and you can put it a on a retractor system and the cool thing about the retractor system if you leave it attached to your BC you're always going to have it you're never gonna forget it if it's always attached and all you got to do is simply pull it out to use it when you're done using it just ease it up the retractor is going to bring it right back and just simply hangs on your BC so that's actually another very popular design that a lot of divers here in our area use now the next owner that we're going to look at is not a standard analog compass it's actually a digital compass and this one happens to be on the Maurya is genius here and a lot of times all you got to do is scroll through the menu till you find the compass and then once you find it you're gonna see that it comes up in a digital format now the benefit to a digital compass is they are tilt compensating and you're gonna learn a little bit later on while we don't ever want to tilt the compass we always want to hold that compass level to make sure that it works well with a digital compass they are actually tilt compensating so you can actually set it up to where no matter how you look at your computer it's always going to be accurate the other big major benefit here is you can either run magnetic north or true north on most digital compasses to where most standard analog compasses they're working off magnetic north only so that's another benefit to here then the last type of compass we're going to look at is not something that I really recommend as a primary compass I know I use mine all the time and occasionally I'll use it for Dobbin just maybe I've had to hand my compass off to a student or something like that and I'll always have a backup but I don't really recommend the little button compasses like I've got here this is just a little wrist mount sunt oh I know in a lot of our videos you guys have asked what type of compass is on my wrist well that's what it is it's just a Sun toe clipper it just clipped straight onto now even though it works good it's got a rotating bezel which we'll get into a little bit later as well it works but it's still not my primary it's not something I would recommend as your primary go-to underwater navigational device it's just simply as a backup now all that being said here on the surface I use this guide just about every single day so I do like it for that purpose but for underwater I think I would rather have one of these systems instead of this as a primary so now that we understand all the different types of compasses out there let's zoom in a little bit closer and I'll show you the individual features of the compass and I'll talk about how you set it up and how we actually use it alright guys so taking a closer look at the compass itself we're going to look at the individual features and we're going to talk briefly about how it actually works so a compass is a pretty self-explanatory device it works off magnetism now we do have true magnetic north compasses and our true north compiz and then we have magnetic north compasses these analog compasses are primarily going to be your magnetic north compasses the true north compasses those are going to be your digital compasses and you can set them up either for magnetic or true north as far as what you're going to use it doesn't really matter as far as Dobbin goes because you're not gonna be diving a distance that that's long enough that you're going to be off by any major degrees if you will now if you're flying in an airplane or something like that it's gonna be a little bit different but for as far as diamond goes the magnetic north compasses are gonna work just fine me personally I actually preferred the analog compasses over the digital I do think they're a little bit easier to use although you do go to make sure that they're held level to where the digital compasses you don't I just think the operations of this is a little bit easier than sitting there pushing buttons on a digital compass so taking a closer look at the individual components we're gonna have a rotating bezel we're gonna have a view screen we're also gonna have a view window here on the side both the view window and view screen is gonna have a lover line we're gonna have a dial card in the center that's got our navigational headings and our points of reference which is north south east and west and then you're gonna have the housing now it's important to note that the housings are all filled not water filled if they were water filled in extreme cold temperatures they could freeze and bust the housing and of course you're compensating going to work after that so most compasses today especially the ones for diamond are going to be oilfield not water filled so how do we actually use it well for basic compass navigation they're really simple you're gonna simply hold it level now if you're using a console style compass you will notice that the console is slanted so as its slanted it actually holds the compass level so if I'm holding this out here in front of me and I've got it slanted so that I can see say the pressure gauge my compass is always going to be flat and level with a wrist style compass it's a little bit a little bit more difficult to operate but with a little bit of practice this actually becomes pretty easy so let's imagine for a second this is on my wrist I'm going to temporarily put it on my arm what you're going to do is take the arm that you're not using the compass on in here I'm pointing in the direction that you want to go now if I'm laid flat in the water column if I'm laid in that horizontal trimmed out swimming position I'm gonna take my compass hand and I'm gonna put it on my wrist and that's gonna actually hold it level and hold it steady while I'm navigating if I start to turn the compass will actually be locked in it's not going to be tilting or anything like that so it's pretty simple to hold these guys level the next thing you want to do is either use your view window or your view screen here and you're gonna find that louver line and you're gonna line that lover line up perpendicular to you and your destination so for video purposes I'm gonna pretend that you guys are actually wearing a compass and I happen to be the destination so as I'm lined up here or as you're lined up here you're either going to look through the view window or the view screen itself you're going to make sure that read lover line is perpendicular for you or to you and to your destination and then you're gonna notice the dial card we've got north-south east-west now to keep this simple we're not going to be going over all these different headings in this video that'll be for a more advanced navigational video all you need to focus on is that North there now some compasses won't actually have the end for North it'll be like this one where they got just a little pointer that just simply means North so if yours don't have an end on it look for the era this one actually has an in and North as well we're gonna take the rotating bezel and we're gonna simply turn it and what you want to do is you want to line up the index marker of zero you can see the zero here while holding it level you want to line up the index marker with North so as you can see index zero and North are lined up perfect and as long as I hold that compass level and I always keep north and zero lined up while I'm swimming I'm going to be going in a straight line it's the most basic and simplest way to use a compass now we can actually reverse that for a reciprocal to get your reciprocal once you've reached your destination while still holding the compass level you're going to simply turn your index marker to where zero lines up with south then once you've finished your dive and you're headed back to your exit point when you turn your body north and zero will automatically line right back up and that lets you know you're going in a straight reciprocal heading to what your navigational heading was hi guys so let's take a closer look at how we do 90-degree turns and 120 degree turns real quick it's actually very simple to do the key is is knowing which way do you turn the bezel versus which way do you actually turn your body and in short you're always going to do the opposite of what you actually want to do so keeping the compass lined up in the straight navigational hitting that we go up we're going to pretend that you are the diver and that you're heading to a destination well I'm a blockage in the destination you're gonna actually have to go around me so you guys are going to be turning to the right I'm gonna actually turn my bezel to the left to help you guys out so to do that let's say I need to make a 90-degree turn instead of looking at any of the numbers we understand that a zero in North or Londe then a 90 degree turn in the opposite direction to say east would be West so all I'm gonna do is turn zero to West I know to know to be true that that's a ninety degree turn and then when I turn my body to the east you will notice that north and zero line right back up and that's a accurate way to make an actual 90-degree turn without confusing yourself with all the numbers now if I reset that we can actually do the same thing with say a 120 degree term which would be an equilateral triangle if you will except this time we are going to have to do a little bit of math the same rule in principle is going to apply though if I want to make my turn say to the right I'm going to actually turn my bezel to the left or in the opposite direction now I noticed that on the index marker it says zero lined up with North now North is actually 180 on the actual dial card so what I'm going to do is notice and how the dial card if I turn the bezel in that direction the dial card is actually going a little bit lesser in degrees so I'm gonna - 120 from 180 and I know that my new heading would of course be the 60 degrees so as I turn my index marker to line up with say 60 degrees on the dial card then when I turn my body that 120 degrees I will notice that zero and North lined right back up and it doesn't really matter which way you do it as long as you turn the bezel the opposite direction of what you're actually wanting to do and then turn your body zero and North will always be lined up with the exact heading that you actually need all right guys so that's gonna be the end of the first part of this series on underwater navigation with a compass what we did today is we looked at several different analog comps and we even talked a little bit about digital compasses and some of the features of it as far as the tilt compensating goes me personally I actually like the analog a little bit better but what we're going to do in the second part of the series is I'm actually gonna take you over to the pool with an actual student and we're going to show you how we allow them to train both at the surface and underwater for their basic open water course we may even throw in a little bit of navigational work as far as what we do in the navigation course as well based off the timeframe not sure if we'll actually get to that but then of course then the third part of the series I might take you on an actual underwater navigational dive and I'm going to show you just how far you can actually take a compass while diving underwater because I really hope you like to start to this series if you got any questions on underwater navigation definitely drop me a comment down below and I'll try to answer it the best I can if you like this video smash that like button for me definitely share it as well as always make sure you follow us on Instagram and Twitter like us on Facebook pin it on Pinterest subscribe to us here on YouTube and as always guys we appreciate your business [Music] [Music]

Channel: LakeHickoryScuba

Views: 12,317

Rating: 4.9387755 out of 5

Keywords: How To Use A Compass Underwater, Scuba Diving Compass, Mares XR Compass, XS Scuba Compass, Underwater Navigation, Instructor Bryan Stafford, Lake Hickory Scuba Center And Marina

Id: Ai1k67erLWc

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019