My journey into tech

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Heaven forbid if someone actually wants to spend extra time getting essential skills down before advancing to the next level!

Sure, essential skills like buoyancy, trim, and propulsion are definitely required before progressing down the tech road. They are great examples of essential skill mastery. The problem wit the SDI/TDI (and really almost every OW sidemount vs. the tech component) is that they just straight up skip what most people would consider essential skills in the OW component because they assume either A) the student doesn't need to know it, or B) it's too difficult for the student to do it. The problem is that neither are true.

A good example is stowing the long hose after air sharing. Most OW sidemount courses say, "hey, we're surfacing, don't worry about it!" The problem is, without teaching you to stow the long hose underwater, if you're ever in that situation, you're screwed. I can see several situations even in open water where that skill would be required.

Look at it this way, you're not losing anything by doing the TDI component. However, by doing the SDI component first, then the TDI component, you're really only adding an additional fraction of information to what's already been presented in the first course. I don't specifically know the SDI/TDI course material, but with some other agencies the information is even contradictory when you progress. My position is that you should be getting the correct, complete information from the get go. They're the same book for a reason, so why wouldn't you take advantage of getting all of the available information, rather than paying for a top up on stuff you should already have. Or worse, having to re-learn skills because the OW and tech components contradict each other.

A large part of technical diving is optimization of gear and procedure. I think this is apparent enough in the way people learn to recreational dive vs people starting down the tech road. So why not start with the optimized procedures and gear from the start? More and more people are seeing this as a better path to take, evidenced by the increasing popularity of BP/W's, primary donate, etc. Why go back to the "stab jacket, face covering, golden triangle" of the rec sidemount world when you can immediately start with the "long hose, in trim, BP/W" of the tech sidemount world.
 
I learned sidemount last May. I went directly for the TDI sidemount and I didn't even know there was a SDI version before reading this thread.

I believe I had less dives than you when I took that class, and didn't find it very difficult, and didn't feel the need for an extra class in between. Although to be fair, I might be biased since my "class" probably didn't happen in the most classical way. I did sidemount and Intro to Cave at the same time, and basically went on a two weeks holidays with my instructor and three of his friends (all of whom are all very experimented cave divers and dive instructors. Two of those are also sidemount intructors - everyone was of course helping and chiping in with advices at the end of every day). After quite some time to set-up the gear, we spent a whole day underwater to make me confortable under water with my new sidemount gear. But exercices and skills were also integrated in all following dives too. I was given my certification at the end of the holidays, once I had enough repetition of all skills and was confident enough with my diving.

So maybe, if you feel you need more time, one solution would be to go directly for the TDI sidemount, but ask your instructor to increase the lenght of the class? Add more dives in? This way, you can have all the available information from the start, as mentionned above, but also have more time to build up your skills with the help of a professional?

Or start with SDI if you really prefer, but ask your instructor to at least show you the extra skills for TDI Sidemount, so that you know what will be laying for you the following year and already have that in mind during the SDI Sidemount class?
 
A good example is stowing the long hose after air sharing. Most OW sidemount courses say, "hey, we're surfacing, don't worry about it!" The problem is, without teaching you to stow the long hose underwater, if you're ever in that situation, you're screwed. I can see several situations even in open water where that skill would be required.

If you can't stow the hose after air sharing, how do you do an S drill?
 
If you can't stow the hose after air sharing, how do you do an S drill?

Bingo. Maybe it's just the class I saw, but modified S-drills only. They never pulled the loop from the tank and cut the drill. The one time I saw a full gas share it was at the end of the dive and they surfaced and walked up the steps, hoses everywhere.
 
SM "maiden voyage" (as a friend calls it) is in the pool Saturday. I'll have two more pool sessions to get familiar with everything before SM class (probably either April or May). Shop has 3 hour pool practice session once a month for certified divers, and it's great for getting stuff squared away with new gear. Will be first time I try out Deep6 fins diving, not just doing laps.
 
A good example is stowing the long hose after air sharing. Most OW sidemount courses say, "hey, we're surfacing, don't worry about it!" The problem is, without teaching you to stow the long hose underwater, if you're ever in that situation, you're screwed. I can see several situations even in open water where that skill would be required.

Can you elaborate on this? So one team mate loses his gas and the entire team goes up using one gas source. The out of gas diver is on the 7ft, while the diver donating is on the necklace. Both divers reach the surface and establish positive buoyancy. You mean to tell me that the diver who donated the diver just lets the 7ft hose dangle off to the side without re-routing it and clipping off the second stage onto the right shoulder D-Ring? That long hose gives the team mobility and maneuverability but left dangling, it's a liability..

Does this problem originate from a training standard or from the "normalization of deviance" on the part of the divers?
 
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SM went pretty well today. Dang, the bungees are a bear! Tanks trimmed out decently. 36" short hose is too long (you can see it above my head in selfie pic). Perhaps 28" or 30". Someone hung a mirror in the deep end (we had rented lanes in an indoor community pool), and I got my first underwater selfie! :D It was very helpful and rather neat to be able to see myself "live" rather than in pics and video after the fact. I *love* SM. It was wonderfully stable and comfortable. Started out with my new Deep 6 fins. But the new fins on top of SM was just too much new stuff at once. Went back to my splits.

Only needed 4 lbs on my shoulders with 3mm wetsuit. Tried 8 lbs, but that was too much. Gear: Hollis SMS75 rig, Apeks XTX50 regs, HP80 tanks.
 
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