Some of the technical divers you will run into have large egos. In some cases it is a concerted effort to make up for a lack of skills, experience or judgement - in some cases all three - in other cases it is just part of the mindset of people who do things like technical diving and is pretty harmless.
In my experience, the quiet ones who feel no particular need to flaunt or brag about their abilities tend to be the competent ones, listen to them when they speak and ignore the rest.
The other thing you have probably picked up on is that some technical divers can be very dogmatic regarding agency and certain procedures. In my experiece, the more experience a diver gets the less dogmatic he or she is - if they continue to do something or believe something it is because they can back it up with direct experience rather than on a indirect authoritatian source . Taht terned form dogma to experience holds for GUE trained divers as there really is no substitute for experience and the judgment that comes from the seasoning that occurs over a thousand dives or so. And after 1000 dives or so where you got your initial certs is mostly meanigless.
Sadly, you'll have to get used to some caustic comments now and then, especially on-line where people tend to say things in a manner they would not use in person. Mods can't be everywhere all the time. But please don't get the wrong impression, the tech community as a whole is not as egotistical, childish or contentious as it appeared here in this thread.
Staying with TDI is fine. There are those that like GUE and those that don't and you can be DIR without being GUE - DIR came along long before GUE came along and tried to institutionalize it, but some of the more zealous GUE types forget that to annoyance of all including the other 95% of the GUE trained divers who are nice normal people.
END is one of the bigger areas of contention between the GUE and non GUE crowd. Divers vary in temrs of their congnitve resources and their ability to adapt or deal with nitrogen narcoisis and individual divers vary from dive to dive but in general, from a non GUE perspectiove, an END deeper than 100' is not automatically unsafe and I am personally fine diving to 150' under the right conditions on a suitable nitrox mix and I generally regard dives in the 100-130 ft range to be a monumental waste of helium unless the dive is incredibly demanding. 30/30 is just not in my future, but on the other hand I am fine with other divers who may see the need to use it.
Intro to tech is fine - if you need it -and with your fairly small number of dives, the odds are very good that you would learn a lot from it. I am a bit old school and back in the day, you could not buy tech training unless you had at least 100 dives and at least 25 of those were below 100'. It more or less put the burden for Intro to Tech type skills on the diver who acquired them most often through a mentoring arrangement with a more expereinced diver.
Advanced Nitrox and Deco Procedures are usually taken together and both in combination certify you to dive to 150' on air or nitrox mixes and to use multiple deco gasses up to and including 100% O2. Many TDI trained divers tend to use 50% Nitrox and 100% O2 for deco.
TDI also offers an Extended Range course that I think most people now combine with trimix on the last two dives. This TDI verion of normoxic trimix certifies the diver to 200' on normoxic trimix and the advanced trimix class deals with hypoxic mixes to 300'.
The idea behind a "deep air" Extrended Range approach to basic trimix is that it lets you make an informed decision about the depths and conditions where you feel trimix is essential to a safe and successful dive. I like that a lot better than a rigid dogmatic approach to END.
The suggestion that V-Planner is only a tool for those who are trained is well intentioned but misguided. How exactly is a new diver supposed to have an intelligent discussion of various deco models and profiles in a class unless they have beee exposed to them previously, played around with them and had time to process the information?
What is also implied in saying you should not mess with V-planner is that you will use it to do something stupid by substuting a familiarity with deco tables and software for real deco procedures training. If a diver is really that stupid, denying them access to V-Planner is not going to save them from their destiny with the grim reaper anyway.
I like V-planner, I also like Palm VPM (which is a VPM-A software model designed for use on a Palm platform, and I like DPlan which is a bubble gradient model also designed for use on a Palm. A Palm is a lot easier to carry around and use on a dive boat than a lap top.
My advice is to get your hands on a variety of software, deco tables and books on deco theory so that you are fully familiar with what is out there, the various options and the pros and cons before you take a deco procedures class. That will prevent you from ending up in a class where, for example, the instructor still feels the US Navy tables, V-Planner or any other single source is the greatest and teaches you little else. Having an open mind is a good thing and an excellent survival skill in technical diving so its a good idea to cultivate that early on to ensure you continue learning throughout your career.
i have no experience with doubles or real gas management so training in those areas I am thinking is were i should start. I am not married to TDI but since i had taken there courses before its what i know. As far as GUE I currently dive with a Trans Pac so they wont even let me take the course if i wanted to.
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