Course progression to Tec diving

[stuartv]

hello all,

I have been diving regularly for about 5 years. I mainly dive to 18m or less to hunt lobsters.

I have just got my first backplate and wing setup. Once I get used to it I am planning to do some more training to work up to dive some wrecks that sit in about 42 m.

I will start with my Padi advanced open water and nitrox as I think I will need to do them before I can do the below.

Some of y'all really seem like you're jumping the gun with recommendations to go straight to tech courses.

It seems to me like he should get some more experience diving deeper than 100' before he takes a course that certifies him to 150'.

I don't think TDI AN/DP or the PADI Tek courses teach you how to use a reel and run a line. The instructor may include bonus material, but that is beside the point. I don't know whether Fundies includes laying line, but I suspect not. I was taught how to shoot a bag and run a line during my (non-penetration) SDI Wreck course. Shooting a bag was part of AN/DP, but laying a guide line was not.

It seems to me like he needs to take a Nitrox course, a Deep course, and a Wreck course (to learn how to run a line, even without penetration), before he moves straight into tech courses. Particularly given his stated goals.

Personally, if I were going to take exactly one tech course ("one" meaning a class that is or can be completed in consecutive days, with no breaks for practice or gaining more experience), I would take (as I said earlier) TDI Intro to Tech/Advanced Nitrox/Deco Procedures/Helitrox, which is commonly offered as one course. That will teach you how to dive doubles and certify you for deco dives with unlimited deco time, to a max of 150' (45m), using 1 deco gas (up to 100% Oxygen), and with up to 20% Helium. I'm not saying there isn't one, but I don't know of any other agency that offers 1 course that gives you all that capability.

 

[_Ralph]

I have done some digging and checked with the local "dive buddies" page and there isn't a local GUE instructor (apparently you can arrange for one to fly in if you can get enough numbers and it looks like there is a fair bit of interest). Someone recommended doing AN/DP and then doing GUE Fundamentals after.

I'd do fundamentals first, then AN/DP myself ... get the basic foundation down (Propulsion, Trim, Buoyancy) then add the fun stuff.

While there isn't a hometown local GUE instructor, of the 9 instructors in Australia, the closest is Josh D'Ambrosio in SA .... I do realize that that is still very far away ..... but you have nearly twice as many instructors in your country than I do ......


_R

 

[boulderjohn]

I'd do fundamentals first, then AN/DP myself ... get the basic foundation down (Propulsion, Trim, Buoyancy) then add the fun stuff.

While there isn't a hometown local GUE instructor, of the 9 instructors in Australia, the closest is Josh D'Ambrosio in SA .... I do realize that that is still very far away ..... but you have nearly twice as many instructors in your country than I do ......

You folks do realize that those skills are taught in all tech programs run by all agencies, don't you? You don't have to go to the ends of the Earth to find the only person who knows the secret. It is not the Holy Grail.

 

[rivers]

I would do fundies first, in a single tank. Establish a solid foundation, enjoy the dives you are currently qualified to do (and get a nitrox qualification through fundies in the process). Then work on your AOW or work your way through the GUE rec program, move to twins and then start your technical progression. By becoming a solid diver now, the jump to twinsets and technical diving will be much easier.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Sheck Exley had the idea of taking the skills taught in cavern courses and sharing them with the open water community back in the 1980's. He was too busy exploring to implement this idea. The success of the GUE-F program really needs to be credited to Andrew Georgitsis who now runs UTD. He put pen to paper and created the fundies workshop that eventually became a certification course for GUE. But, like John said, TB&P are not skills you can only learn from GUE courses. The entirety of the cave community pretty much possesses it. Not every recreational or technical instructor does. That's why I suggested finding an instructor with a cave background.

Bill "Hogarth" Main took me through his system himself at Ginnie and none of us are really doing Hogarthian right. GUE goes beyond Hogarthian to DIR.

I have over 100 certifications from most agencies and the only recreational courses that I found to be truly educational were OW, nitrox, rescue and instructor. Every tech and cave course I had was valuable.

 

[WantSomeScuba?]

I would do fundies first, in a single tank. Establish a solid foundation, enjoy the dives you are currently qualified to do (and get a nitrox qualification through fundies in the process). Then work on your AOW or work your way through the GUE rec program, move to twins and then start your technical progression. By becoming a solid diver now, the jump to twinsets and technical diving will be much easier.

That's exactly what my boss told me about my Fundies course in June--do it single tank, get it down, and then move on from there. I believe his exact words to me were, "you will be (freaking) miserable if you do Fundies with with me in a twin set."

 

[stuartv]

You folks do realize that those skills are taught in all tech programs run by all agencies, don't you? You don't have to go to the ends of the Earth to find the only person who knows the secret. It is not the Holy Grail.

I have no certs from GUE or PADI, so this is just my perception as a potential consumer. The PERCEPTION seems to be that, for that stuff, GUE has a very high percentage of "good" instructors. To the point of most people seeming to feel like you can sign up for Fundies with any old randomly chosen GUE instructor and you will get high quality instruction. The perception also seems to be that, for that stuff, PADI has an equally high percentage of "bad" instructors. To the point that almost nobody would sign up for a PADI tech course with any old randomly chosen PADI instructor. That is my perception, as one who has no affiliation with either, of why people would quite commonly recommend Fundies versus recommending any PADI tech course.

 

[tbone1004]

@boulderjohn it's not PADI bashing as an agency, it's the risk:reward of actually getting good instruction. If you take PADI's AOW/Nitrox combined course from a recreational instructor, it serves literally no purpose other than having a card to check a box. If you take it with a properly qualified tech instructor who will treat it as a true advanced course and teach you meaningful skills, then great, no problem. PADI's CCR program is actually more difficult than that from TDI and IANTD, but for a course like AOW, the risk of wasting time and money is high.

 

[boulderjohn]

I have no certs from GUE or PADI, so this is just my perception as a potential consumer. The PERCEPTION seems to be that, for that stuff, GUE has a very high percentage of "good" instructors. To the point of most people seeming to feel like you can sign up for Fundies with any old randomly chosen GUE instructor and you will get high quality instruction. The perception also seems to be that, for that stuff, PADI has an equally high percentage of "bad" instructors. To the point that almost nobody would sign up for a PADI tech course with any old randomly chosen PADI instructor. That is my perception, as one who has no affiliation with either, of why people would quite commonly recommend Fundies versus recommending any PADI tech course.

And whence comes this perception"? You certainly have it, even though you have taken no courses from either organization. Where did you get it?

You got it, of course, from reading ScubaBoard, where the same few people write the same stuff over and over and over and over again, thus giving the impression of a major trend in thinking. If you read ScubaBoard, you will get the impression that the backplate and wing is the form of BCD most widely used on Earth. If you run a survey (as has been done many times before), it will comprise more than half of the responses. Industry statistics, however, indicate that the BP/W constitutes less than 1% of all annual sales. ScubaBoard has a very small and specialized portion of the diving community, and even within that small selection, a handful of voices dominate.

Now that you have gotten your SB-based perception, you repeat it regularly, thus enlarging that perception, even though you have absolutely no personal knowledge of any facts related to it.

 

[tbone1004]

@boulderjohn while I certainly end up on one of the same few people that you are reference, and I freely admit to having a generally low perception of the PADI instructor corps *from witnessing far too much*, there are some truly superb PADI instructors. I would have no issue recommending because while as a whole they have some of the worst instructors, they also have some of the best. That group is getting smaller and smaller as they tend to migrate to SDI/TDI which also fulfills the requirement of most technical only agencies to also be an active recreational instructor, but they still exist.
Unfortunately, those good instructors are hard to find and if you believe that you can blindly find a PADI tech 40 instructor and guarantee a quality dive education, your perception of PADI is the opposite, but just as inaccurately skewed as the one you have observed on Scubaboard. Finding one is also made rather difficult since their website doesn't allow you to search for instructors, only dive shops. You can filter to show tech shops, but you then have to go to the shop website, find out who the instructors are, then start the interview process. Things like that only go to perpetuate my aversion to recommending PADI tec instruction in favor of agencies like TDI/SDI, IANTD, GUE or whomever else which allows you to go to their website, find an instructor in your area, they list the name/contact etc of the instructors, and then you can search online to find out more information about that instructor.