Actually, a good instructor may ask you to own your own kit and help you select it, so you can develop familiarity and comfort with it, rather than letting you go technical diving with rental gear.
Deep 6 regulator and TDI
- Thread starter Divingblueberry
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Actually, a good instructor may ask you to own your own kit and help you select it, so you can develop familiarity and comfort with it, rather than letting you go technical diving with rental gear.
BTW, doubles and cylinders, rent them. primary and backup regs, backplate & harness, wing or sidemount rig, you need to own them.
I think it is completely wrong to imply that an instructor is not "good" if they don't have kit to lend.
There are a lot of considerations related to that, but one very practical one is that professional insurance (here in the U.S. anyway) is more expensive if you are paying to cover gear that you provide to students.
When I took Intro to Tech, it started with some classroom time to cover what kind of equipment the student would need and then there was time to get it before the first sessions in water.
I think a "good" instructor would do what is required to help the student show up for the first session in the water properly prepared. That does not necessarily mean loaning the student equipment. Are you suggesting that all students should show up to the first day of class WITHOUT any of the required equipment and expect to borrow it all??
@Divingblueberry: When it comes to tech diving, I probably can't even carry @kensuf's jock strap. But, FWIW, I totally agree with everything he said. If you do some smart shopping and spend your pennies wisely, you can get a BP, wing, and harness for relatively cheap. As in, relative to buying doubles regs and so forth. Renting cylinders to use with your own rig is fine. It's actually probably a good way to try different size cylinders and see what actually works best for you and your body and exposure protection. Cylinders that are a good "fit" for you can make good trim a lot easier to achieve. Cylinders that are a poor fit can make all kinds of things less pleasant than they need to be.
They gave you the correct message in that case. It's expensive. Little things that you'd think would be cheap are also expensive. Have you looked at reels yet? heh...
Also, some instructors are oddly picky about particular components. I've replaced pieces of my kit to satisfy an instructor more than once.
If that is what has been arranged. Here Intro to Tech is a two day course typically run over a weekend. Travel is likely involved. You want to split it over a day to do kit education, a few weeks off to order and buy the kit, and another day in the water? All to avoid keeping an extra twinset or two and some regs to hand?
Insurance? Don’t dive centres in the US rent out kit to recreation divers? Do OW instructors expect a new students to turn up with a full set of kit? Intro to Tech is mostly shallow skills and really no different. How do people offering CCR try dives manage?
Some people will have vaguely appropriate kit and be fine, some people will need advice about kit they have, some about kit they are still to buy and some will only be curious about the whole deal and not want to be buying 2k of stuff. It is only an introduction.
So, if you fall into the last two categories an instructor which can’t provide kit is not useful unless they are very close and prepared to hand out advice before really starting the course.
Can you tell if a student needs twin 10s or 12s without meeting them? A tail weight?
The wing I did Intro to Tech in is gathering dust in my garage. I leaned on the course it wasn’T a great choice, and replaced it eventually I might use it if I lend my proper kit to someone who wants to try out a twinset. When my GF did Intro to Tech the instructor had a whole room full of kit to choose from.
Really, a good instructor is providing a service to a customer. They ought to take into account the needs of the customer and how to best fulfill those. Is having a customer spend a lot of money to go down a route they might decide against best? Or is showing them what the instructor considers optimal kit configuration before spending the money better?
I can see that in the OPs location choices might be limited. If the only shop doing ItoT is trying to make money selling a lot of kit then that is a shame. Other agencies have similar courses and maybe those instructors will be able to provide the required service.
Beyond the intro courses, should a deco cylinder be steel or aluminium? What size? What to buy to take on the course? Silly really.
OP
Divingblueberry
Contributor
You are correct. You would have to modify the plate to dive doubles. I know of at least one person who has done it, but personally I'd rather just use a regular (and cheaper) plate for a doubles rig instead of messing with my freedom plate. Even if you drilled it out to affix doubles, the integrated STA might be interesting to deal with and then there's the issue of no edge material on the plate its-self.
You buy so much crap when you get into any kind of tech diving that an extra plate or two is truly just a small drop in the bucket. I think I've got 5 plates now, plus two sidemount bcd's.. It doesn't bear thinking about.
OP
Divingblueberry
Contributor
That's what I am inclined to do. I, however, would like to talk with the instructor prior to start buying the gear. I like the idea of taking the time to ask as many questions as I wish and figure out what I would prefer. There is a good number of dive shops here, I am sure I can find a place that rents doubles.
It makes a lot of sense. I never tried steel cylinders (or anyting else than AL 80). Who knows, maybe I'll prefer that ? There a many discussions here on SB and the internet about backplates, I'll read a lot first and then have a good talk with the instructor. Again, the best scenario would be to be able to try different cylinders and see what suits me best.
Ha ha ha ha
No. Now I am almost afraid to look !
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