Originally posted by Mario S Caner
Since recreational diving is no deco diving where a mandatory stop is not required, this amount of air should be more than sufficient.
Stop being so provincial Mario!!!
Recreational diving in Europe (BSAC in the UK, and FFESSM here in france)
IS decompression diving.
The definition of technical diving that is prevalent in Europe at the moment is 'a dive involving more than one air mix, or a regulator exchange', (Diver magasine, some time early 2000)
So recreational diving includes,
Nitrox
Planned Decompression
Technical starts with:-
Planned reg changeing for different mix (does not include reg changeing for Pony use)
Accelerated Deco. and so on.......
The vast majority of divers in Europe that I have come across are part of a club, and as such will also be boathandlers, etc... rather than being paying dive 'customers'.
PADI is currently Illegal as a training organisation here in france, simply because the french government has decided that SCUBA as a sport should not be done in a comercial 'dive customer' manner, and that for safety, and general education they will impose their own standards (through FFESSM, the official certifying agency here who are CMAS affiliated) which do not allow people to qualify in less than about 30 contact hours (no CD-ROM instead of lectures!). Some modern PADI courses in the UK, using the CD ROM are taught in less than 15 contact hours (5 x 1 hour pool modules, 2 x 5 hours for Open water dives)
If you can read french, there is on the PADI Pros area of their website the PADI Europe Political news - read the April 2000 French issue to see what we are up against here!
This (French) insistance on their own training, is that the PADI system trains divers for diving that is significantly different from that done in Europe over the last 35-40 years, and they believe it insufficient to cope with the local conditions.
Everywhere is different. The American way isn't always the most appropriate. There are many O/W divers that I have come across that are in no way capable of safely diving under UK conditions, even though they were trained there.
Different strokes for different folks I guess!
Jon T
PS the new DSAT TecRec Deep course covers people to do the same diving as a CMAS *** diver (upto 50m with mandatory decompression IF I have translated from the french correctly)