Quote: (Originally Posted by
neilh)
There aren't really fixed roles in the team - you need to be able to adapt to the dive and shuffle the jobs round as necessary. For instance if the person who was going to shoot the bag finds they've lost their SMB you can either get one of the team to hand theirs over or just switch roles around.
One thing we found worked reasonably well on our tech1 course for instance was the first person who switched to their deco gas shot the bag and the last ran the deco. The first person could then start building the bag and getting ready to send it up while the other two switched gas and the last person could start the timer once they'd switched. Needless to say it was typically a completely different team order to the one we started with once we arrived at the gas switch
You make some good points about swapping tasks around Neil - but I'm a little confused by your last paragraph. Someone should be running the deco before you get to the gas switch - so changing roles there is not great. In addition, the team should not really all be switching at the same time and whoever 'finishes first' should be watching the others not buildng a bag. The time that things are most likely to go wrong on a Tech 1 ascent are at the gas switch so taking yoru eye off the ball is not helpful.
Bag off from 24 so that your team has a bag when switching or wait untiul everone has switched and are stable before shooting one. That's if the skipper is content with bags being sent up mid water - soem are, some aren't and some wrecks don't permit us the luxury.
If you had a bag up when you reach a switch (which you always will have at higher levels) then the person managing the bag can watch the other two swicth then the first to finish that can take it over.