GUE Tech vs. TDI Tech classes

[Jardine]

I am looking down the road to more diving education. I am taking the PADI rescue diver class next month and would like to follow it this spring with the PADI Divemaster course. The LDS closest to me is a PADI shop and I would like to work as a Divemaster to build experience and to get in the water more often. Free fills wouldn't hurt either. I have been reading about tech diving and have look into the different classes available in my area and was wonder if there is any advantage of the GUE Tech class route vs. the TDI Tech courses.

There is a shop about 1.5 hours away that teaches all levels of TDI courses. The only GUE instructor in my state, Utah, teaches GUE Rec 1 and Fundies only. After getting my tech pass with GUE, I would have to travel to take the Tech 1 course. I looked at the GUE website and I believe the nearest instructor for anything after Fundies is all the way across the US in Florida.

I've looked at the curriculum for the TDI classes and the GUE Tech 1 course and it appears that the outline and skills demonstrated in GUE Tech 1 would be mostly the equivalent of the TDI Intro to Tech, Nitrox, Advanced Nitrox, and Decompression Procedures. I then glanced at the GUE Tech 2 outline and found many similarities between it and the TDI Extended Range and Trimix courses. I did notice that the GUE prerequisites for Tech 2 had minimum number of “tech” dives, “Must have a minimum of 200 dives, with at least fifty dives on double tanks/cylinders; twenty-five of these should have utilized a single decompression cylinder”. I didn’t see this for TDI but I didn’t take the time to go back and add up all the dives that would be done throughout the different courses. I’m sure there are many differences and I don’t want to nit pick about minute differences. Would it be fair to say that if one diver took the TDI route and another took the GUE route to the levels I mentioned, would their skill sets/qualifications/technical diving knowledge be comparable? It may seem that going the GUE route may have the bigger bang for the buck even having to travel to Florida for the tech classes although I’m not sure how much the GUE classes would run me.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

Just a couple of minor notes. If you're going the TDI route you don't have to take the Intro to Tech course. You can also combine some courses like Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures.

 

[Goindrinkn]

One of the requirements for the GUE tech classes are taking the fundamentals class. If you're considering GUE I'd recommend that you do a little looking on the board for reports on fundies. Personally I believe that it would be worth looking into before entering the divemaster program. (I put my DM on hold to take the class as the skills I learned in GUE-F made me more comfortable in my ability, and much more presentable in front of students and newer divers.) If you were to look at something like that you'd get a taste of how the GUE classes work and that may help you make your decision on the Tech classes.

 

[rjack321]

I would completely disregard all of your assumptions about agencies and choose a high quality instructor.

There are a couple good TDI instructors (2 I can think of). I don't know any good ones in UT although they might exist.

The closest GUE instructor to Utah is probably Rob Calkins in CO although he can't teach tech1. For that it would be Beto in Cali.

GUE Tech2 is going to be an impossible hill to climb in UT without any local buddies or support, or probably even dive sites.

 

[Blackwood]

If you take GUE/F, it may prepare you as well as Intro to Tech. If you don't like the GUE philosophy, then go directly to TDI A/EANx and Deco Procedures. If you do, go for GUE Tech 1.

However, as Richard noted, you'll need a strong team if you go the GUE path (versus it just being advisable otherwise).

 

[TSandM]

No matter which route you decide to go, do Fundies. Ask Rick Inman -- his IANTD tech instructor told him that he thought Fundamentals was the single best thing he could have done to prepare him for his further technical training.

As far as apples and oranges, I can't say anything about tech training between GUE and TDI, but I can tell you the story of two cave classes. I did Cavern and Intro with a TDI instructor. He was an extremely nice, kind and patient man. The class was four days long, and we started about 9 and wrapped up about 4:30. We did all the required skills. I did one -- ONE -- valve shutdown, which consisted of my instructor swimming up to me with a note that read, "Bubbles from behind, shut isolator."

In contrast, Cave 1 was five days, and began at 7:30 every morning, and wrapped up around 9 pm. We covered the same material (after all, how many topics are there in cave diving?) but in astonishingly greater detail. We did more dives (ten are required, IIRC, and we did more than that, I think, plus drills in the open water). We did valve failures (unannounced, and signaled by airgunning) and gas sharing scenarios, and had to figure out how to reorder the team and communicate remaining resources. We had problems given to us to solve that really didn't have clear-cut best answers, and then we had to justify our thinking for why we chose the solutions we did.

Our skills and drills were dissected in detail, and Danny made us do them over and over again, until he was somewhat satisfied. (As a result of this, my recent NACD instructor told me the first day that I was one of the best people to do an airsharing drill with that he had encountered in a long time.) Our gear was inspected and critiqued, and although I thought some of the criticisms were ridiculously picky, I quickly found out that my instructor knew what he was talking about, as the problems he predicted actually occurred.

Now, you could say this was just the expected difference between two instructors, but I have taken GUE classes from three different ones, and they've all been like that. So I think you can expect that, in a GUE class, you will have a very intense experience with a high level of attention to detail and very high performance standards. My guess is that, if you took a class from Steve Lewis (TDI) you'd find it similar, but my experience is that TDI can be far less predictable in terms of the quality of the class.

 

[Peter Guy]

I took Fundies while doing my PADI DM and I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll learn more about diving from Fundies than you will in your DM class -- and I believe you will be a much better DM for having taken Fundies.

Fundies is NOT a technical diving class but, as it says, an "essay" on diving fundamentals which is taken to a much higher level than almost any other "introductory" diving class.

Whether you continue your technical training with GUE or TDI or ? -- I agree with Rj that the key is the instructor.

Unlike TSandM, I don't like, and don't function very well (I might add she doesn't function all that well either!) with 12+ hour classes over-filled with information (her GUE Cave 1 model). I don't think it is an indicator of anything (except perhaps poor planning, scheduling and execution) to have your days filled as she described -- certainly not "better" education. But, I digress. Find an instructor who will fit your style and who has been there/done that.

Most of all, Enjoy the journey.

 

[lamont]

Unlike TSandM, I don't like, and don't function very well (I might add she doesn't function all that well either!) with 12+ hour classes over-filled with information (her GUE Cave 1 model). I don't think it is an indicator of anything (except perhaps poor planning, scheduling and execution) to have your days filled as she described -- certainly not "better" education. But, I digress. Find an instructor who will fit your style and who has been there/done that.

I don't think that lynne's point was that the length in hours-per-day of the course necessarily made it better.

And I'd sign a petition that GUE should bust up its Cave/Tech courses into two pieces, since by the last day I'm always in "deathmarch" mode, which contributes very little to learning anything... Still, I wouldn't exchange my GUE courses for the TDI course that lynne describes...

 

[rjack321]

And I'd sign a petition that GUE should bust up its Cave/Tech courses into two pieces, since by the last day I'm always in "deathmarch" mode, which contributes very little to learning anything...

I think there might actually be an agency that thought of that...

And they have an intro to tech & tech instructor in CO who's doing the dives with his posse, all of which is which is fairly close to the OP...

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

Our skills and drills were dissected in detail, and Danny made us do them over and over again, until he was somewhat satisfied. (As a result of this, my recent NACD instructor told me the first day that I was one of the best people to do an airsharing drill with that he had encountered in a long time.)

Why did you switched to NACD although you were so happy with GUE?