DIR- Generic What constitutes a Tech-1 dive?

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CAPTAIN SINBAD

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I understand that GUE demands proof of 25 dives / 3 years at your highest certification level to renew your Tech 1 certification. What would constitute a Tech-1 dive? Would an extended time dive to 80 feet on 32% classify as a Tech-1 dive because it will still involve doubles and deco bottle. Or would it have to be below 100' on 21/35?

Thanks.
 
I understand that GUE demands proof of 25 dives / 3 years at your highest certification level to renew your Tech 1 certification. What would constitute a Tech-1 dive? Would an extended time dive to 80 feet on 32% classify as a Tech-1 dive because it will still involve doubles and deco bottle. Or would it have to be below 100' on 21/35?

Thanks.
No there's no "proof" anymore, it's up to you to determine. In the past you actually submitted copies of your logbook but that has ceased. And Sheila relied on you to highlight the relevant dives anyway, nobody was scoring those against some definition.

I would say an extended dive at 80ft could qualify but its a bit on the edge. Are developing and maintaining your experience in actual technical diving or just milling about until you get 5 mins of deco to call it a "deco dive"?
 
There's a bit of grey area (from a purely textual perspective). T1 certifies you to use 50% or 100% as well as 30/30, 21/35, and 18/45. Part of the class deals with shallower T1 dives (32 or 30/30 with O2). I asked Kirill if going for a Ginnie dive counted and got a pretty solid no, even though that's technically within the scope of the class. It kinda comes down to intent vs. letter of the law for me. If it falls within the scope of a normal cave dive I would've done pre-T1, doesn't count. If I'm (for some hypothetical reason) using mix and staying above 100', doesn't count. So for my purposes in building experience for T2, I'm only counting dives that require mix due to depth and incur more than a rounding error in deco.
 
I asked Kirill if going for a Ginnie dive counted and got a pretty solid no, even though that's technically within the scope of the class.
A C1 cave dive or a C2 cave dive?

If you are doing a 1 hr C1 cave dive at Ginnie then yeah I'd say no.
If you are doing a 2.5hr C2 cave dive with a stage and significant deco in Ginnie I would say that is good enough to count as a T1 dive as well.

The point of the 25dives in 3 yrs is to say "yes I have a minimum amount of relevant recent experience to plan and execute T1 dives". Having some of that experience on long 32% dives is fine (with me at least). Emphasis on "some". If 20 of those 25 dives you are calling T1 aren't even on mix I'd say that's misleading and missing the point of the renewal. Its a way bigger deal to me that someone lied or missed the point of the renewal than if they have a few long 32% dives that they felt were building and maintaining their experience. The same concern would apply if they were doing short MDL 30/30 dives but claiming that the use of mix somehow magically made them special T1 dives that maintained and built on their experience.
 
There's a bit of grey area (from a purely textual perspective). T1 certifies you to use 50% or 100% as well as 30/30, 21/35, and 18/45. Part of the class deals with shallower T1 dives (32 or 30/30 with O2). I asked Kirill if going for a Ginnie dive counted and got a pretty solid no, even though that's technically within the scope of the class. It kinda comes down to intent vs. letter of the law for me. If it falls within the scope of a normal cave dive I would've done pre-T1, doesn't count. If I'm (for some hypothetical reason) using mix and staying above 100', doesn't count. So for my purposes in building experience for T2, I'm only counting dives that require mix due to depth and incur more than a rounding error in deco.
A shallow cave dive doesn't give you the same experience as you'd get on a deeper cave dive (one that requires 21/35 or 18/45), so I think the guideline of "if you would have done it before T1, it doesn't count" is a good one.

There is value to those longer shallow cave dives, but if someone did a gang of those and asked me if I thought they were ready for tech 2 based on that, I'd tell them no.
 
A shallow cave dive doesn't give you the same experience as you'd get on a deeper cave dive (one that requires 21/35 or 18/45), so I think the guideline of "if you would have done it before T1, it doesn't count" is a good one.

There is value to those longer shallow cave dives, but if someone did a gang of those and asked me if I thought they were ready for tech 2 based on that, I'd tell them no.

Agree with both points, but this was about renewing T1 which is a little different than saying ready for T2. You can be a competent T1 diver with "enough" recent experience on relevant dives, some of which might be long 32% dives to honestly renew with a straight face.

And at the same time be not ready for T2.
 
You guys lost me somewhere. Mostly because I don't know the exact specifics of C1 and C2 so I am still trying to understand how this would factor into your dive count for T1. If I correctly understood the exchange above, then cave dives requiring deco-bottle + 21/35 can also be counted as T1 dives if you are counting towards qualifying for T2. If it is just towards T1 renewal, then not all of them need to be on 21.35. Some of your cave dives on 32% + deco bottle should also substitute for 21/35 cave dives?

Am I there or still shooting in the wind?
 
Agree with both points, but this was about renewing T1 which is a little different than saying ready for T2. You can be a competent T1 diver with "enough" recent experience on relevant dives, some of which might be long 32% dives to honestly renew with a straight face.

And at the same time be not ready for T2.
Then substitute “ready for T2” with tech 1 recency.

If you aren’t doing dives below 100’, then you aren’t current for t1 imo.
 
Then substitute “ready for T2” with tech 1 recency.

If you aren’t doing dives below 100’, then you aren’t current for t1 imo.

Well for me, a couple of 2+hr stage & deco dives in Ginnie or Manatee etc on 32% plus 23 other dives on 21/35 & 18/45 would be qualifying in the staying competent department. Doing 8 or more 100ft+ trimix dives a year is pretty easy though, so if you are reaching to count 32% dives you might want to think twice about what kinds of dives you're really competent for.
 
The way it was explained to me by my instructor was that every class level gives you access to "something extra" compared to the previous one and when you're looking at counting dives, for re-cert or moving to the next level, you should only use dives in which you're making use of all that "extra".

Example, the extras going from Fundies to T1 are normoxic trimix, accelerated deco on 50% or 100% with one bottle and deeper than 100ft. So, if you want to count a dive as T1, it should include as many of those as possible, ideally all. This is just his opinion, not official GUE policy.
 
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