TDI Extended Range - last words of advice?

[Rhone Man]

Going off to do my combined TDI Adv Nitrox / Deco Procedures / Extended Range course in the Dominican Republic on Sunday.

Any useful last words of advice from the tec veterans on the board?

 

[HowardE]

Turn your gas on?

We'll see you on Sunday

 

[brockbr]

Depends on if you're (1) Euphoric narc type, or the (2) Paranoid narc type.

Option #1 - Have fun and enjoy the buzz

Option #2 - Don't worry - The monsters down there are as afraid of you as you are of them - Just don't make any sudden movements

 

[dab]

Go down there healthy and well rested, all your book work done and you'll have a great time. Be prepared for long days, hard work and times of frustration, but if you go with the right attitude you'lll work through it all fine. Make sure you have fun. Good luck.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Add some helium and a couple more dives and make it the TDI basic trimix course instead.

 

[battles2a5]

Add some helium and a couple more dives and make it the TDI basic trimix course instead.

+1


Aside from that:
- hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Repetitive deep decompression dives on air/nitrox over several days is going to take a toll on you. Drink tons of water and get good rest
- Make sure you are comfortable with your basic rig before adding bottles and drills. Little problems (e.g. trouble reaching isolator, breaking trim during air-share, etc.) will only get worse as you add more gear, depth, multi-tasking. Spend time in the pool at the hotel if you have to just running through drills over and over until you get comfortable.
- Slow is fast; take your time with all your drills. You are not on a clock. Give yourself a second or two to prioritize your tasks and then execute deliberately.
- Make sure you get a proper dive briefing before every dive, and that you get a thorough debriefing after every dive. Take note of your own mistakes and don't be shy to discuss them w/ your instructor if he does not bring them up. This is your opportunity to get very detailed feedback from an instructor who is getting paid to notice these things.
- Have fun! I take it you are doing this w/ Pirate's Cove in Samana? I haven't been to that area, but did some cave/wreck diving out of Santo Domingo. It's a very fun country.

 

[Rhone Man]

Yes, diving with Pirate's Cove. Head of training there is a chap named Uwe Rath, who I haven't met yet. Astonishingly it was the nearest place I could find to where I live that teaches tec diving in the English language.

Intro to trimix sounds like a good idea, but there are no trimix blenders in this part of the world, so unless I learn to do it myself (who knows, maybe one day...) it makes more sense to learn deep air.

Looking forward to it tremendously, but pretty sure I'll be dog tired by the end of the week.

 

[Web Monkey]

Going off to do my combined TDI Adv Nitrox / Deco Procedures / Extended Range course in the Dominican Republic on Sunday.

Any useful last words of advice from the tec veterans on the board?

Find a tri-mix instructor, buy a big cylinder of helium and talk your local shop into doing the fills?

I've been to 127' on air and would not care to go much deeper. Paranoid and dumb-as-a-stump doesn't make for a fun dive.

Terry

 

[battles2a5]

I traded some emails w/ Uwe before I went down there. All of those guys seem great and the location seems perfect for training. Deep dives on air in warm clear tropical waters is a little easier to manage than in cold murky conditions (for me, anyway). We were pushing END's in the 180's/190's w/ heliair when I was there and it felt like 100ft in my local mudhole. Any deeper though and you will want some He for sure. Good luck w/ the class!

Yes, diving with Pirate's Cove. Head of training there is a chap named Uwe Rath, who I haven't met yet. Astonishingly it was the nearest place I could find to where I live that teaches tec diving in the English language.

Intro to trimix sounds like a good idea, but there are no trimix blenders in this part of the world, so unless I learn to do it myself (who knows, maybe one day...) it makes more sense to learn deep air.

Looking forward to it tremendously, but pretty sure I'll be dog tired by the end of the week.

 

[Chatterton]

Personally, I think the Extended Range course is not just valuable training but important to diver development. Just for clarification, we are talking about air dives to 180 feet.

I once knew a diver, and for the sake of this story let's call him "Bart". He was a deep air diver who anticipated his evolution into a Trimix Diver with unbridled enthusiasm. Bart had done any number of stupid things at stupid depths on air over many years. Now, with the magic of Trimix, he believed the era of doing stupid things was at an end!! No more mockery coming from peers! Praise Trimix!! Only accolades, victories, and artifacts lay ahead!! Onward!

Maybe not so much? On his very first Trimix dive, Bart did something incredibly stupid, just like he always did. Much to his total amazement, he still did stupid crap!!! What he did not know was that it was not the Nitrogen, it was him, and until he figured that out he was going to continue to do stupid things.

If breathing 30% helium is good, isn't 100% better? No amount of helium will make a dumb ass, smart. If you are "dumb as a stump" at 127 feet, this is god's way of telling you you need more experience before you go much deeper, or he wants to thin you from the herd. Helium for dives in recreational depths is not the answer for inexperience?

The bottom line is that there is no magic gas, no substitute for experience, and no shortcut to becoming a competent, capable deep diver. The only way to develop as a diver is by learning skills, challenging yourself, making dives, and gaining insight.

Trimix is a powerful tool, for use by craftsmen. Before you can utilize it properly and to its potential, you need to become a craftsman? Would you give a 4 year old a circular saw? You can't just show him the buttons and tell him to be careful?

I think the Extended Range program takes divers to reasonable depths for air diving and affords them the opportunity to gain valuable experience on air, before they move on to Advanced Trimix (if Trimix is what they want?).

Among the prerequisites for Advanced Trimix, which takes divers to 100 meters, the candidate needs to be either Extended Range or Basic Trimix certified, not both. In my opinion, the divers that come from Extended Range bring a higher degree of respect for the perils of the environment, and a greater level of skills, fully earned by their bottom time on air.


Cheers

JC