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Do you like text books riddled with grammatical and typographical errors? Do you like Yoga and Feng Shui? If not, take the TDI course.
I have IANTD certifications, for no other reason than the instructor I wanted to use taught under it.
@Lostdiver71 Can't say what will happen now with everyone sheltering, but earlier this year I found them very helpful when I called the Florida office regarding some training material and cert card issues. Here is the email for Luis who ended up helping me and was very responsive - luis@iantd.com
Can anyone give an honest rating between the IANTD and the TDI Advance Nitrox Material?
Thanks,
you shouldn't need any real books for advanced nitrox. You should already know all of the information from basic nitrox, the rest of the good stuff is in the USN diving manual and NOAA manuals. The simple fact is that Advanced Nitrox on its own is a BS course with not a whole lot of useful material in it. Quite literally the only "new" information vs. regular nitrox is that you have to have an O2 clean first stage. Literally everything else should have been taught to you at basic nitrox. CNS exposure, risks of high ppO2, and that's about it.
Don't believe me? Read the S&P from TDI
https://www.tdisdi.com/wp-content/uploads/files/sandp/currentYear/TDI/part 2/pdf/individual/TDI Diver Standards_07_Advanced_Nitrox_Diver.pdf
Required subject areas.
- Physiology
- Hypoxia-pretty self explanatory, but there's no point in discussing hypoxia because you're talking about hyperoxic gases.
- Oxtox-covered in nitrox
- Nitrogen Narcosis-covered in basic OW
- N2 absorption and elimination-it's not a deco procedures course, but you should have covered this in literally every scuba class you've taken, no new information
- CO2 tox-not sure why that's in there, probably just a copy and paste to briefly cover, not unique to this course though
- CO tox-same as CO2
- Formulas
- best mix/MOD-should know from regular nitrox
- Equipment
- considerations for >40%-this is actually new, but only sort of because your regular nitrox should have covered provisions for partial pressure blending for the tanks, so the only new thing is O2 cleaning the first stage, and no 2nd stages don't have to be O2 cleaned
- Tables/Computers
- nothing new from nitrox
- Planning
- nothing new from nitrox
- Mixing procedures
- covered in nitrox, but not really relevant because for Advanced Nitrox you are 99.999% going to have to pp blend
- Deco
- it's not a deco course, though you should combine with deco procedures
So, there's nothing useful in the books that you shouldn't already have. Don't worry about the learning materials because if your regular nitrox class was taught properly, there literally should be 0 new information presented to you. If your regular nitrox class was not taught properly, then go read the NOAA diving manual. It is far more useful if you actually care about the physiology.
This is rev5 for free download. No significant changes in Rev6, so all the good stuff is still relevant. Between this and the USN Diving Manual *free download from them too*, all of the information mentioned in the TDI standards, are available to you. They may not be compiled quite as cleanly as you'd get in a diving course where they've distilled it down to just what you need to know, but this is where all of that information comes from.
http://tecvault.t101.ro/NOAA Diving Manual.pdf
https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Portals/103/Documents/SUPSALV/Diving/US DIVING MANUAL_REV7.pdf?ver=2017-01-11-102354-393