Frustration moving into/towards tech

[NothingClever]

@jlcnuke

Not to knock @Sevenrider860 because I’m sure he’s a stand up guy but given a choice between PADI and GUE, I would definitely pursue GUE. I’m not impressed with GUE but I am much less impressed with PADI’s venture into the technical realm. PADI is like Wal-Mart or Starbuck’s...market saturation to the point QC is really hard to come by. Not impossible but definitely not reliable, IMO.

Again, I don’t express my opinion to denigrate @Sevenrider860 as a PADI instructor but rather my aim is pointed at PADI HQ and the regional CDs that drive implementation of policy. There are good (great!) people in PADI but long-time instructors (30 years) I know have expressed their frustration over PADI’s culture and practices with OW/AOW course leading me to perceive it will be really hard for PADI to get technical diving right.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

If he is a solodiver it would be better if he wouldn't choose GUE...

Why not? I solo dive on occasion. Teach a course on it. I frequently recommend GUE fundies or similar to people for the skills and also improved situational awareness. Being a good team member is beneficial for solo diving for the awareness.

To @jlcnuke , I'd suggest looking at GUE and see if your buddy's condition can be accommodated with a single piece of webbing for the harness. I admit I don't know the extent of his mobility issues obviously. A conversation doesn't hurt. Maybe someone like @johnkendall can chime in?

 

[tbone1004]

@jlcnuke technically your buddy can't dive that quick release in a NAUI tech course either, but waivers can be had. More importantly, and I'll stick with @PfcAJ on this one *and if you aren't aware, he and I butt head pretty much constantly, so us agreeing on something like this is fairly uncommon*, even with most of his arm muscles gone, the harness should not need a quick release for him to get out if it is fit properly and only time with someone who really knows what they're doing will sort that out. The shoulders need to be significantly looser than most people think and during normal diving the shoulder straps don't really do a whole lot other than give you a place to clip stuff off. Going into stuff like this with an open mind is key and finding instructors who are willing to work with you is key. Some are more rigid than others, but you may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[barth]

Why not? I solo dive on occasion. Teach a course on it. I frequently recommend GUE fundies or similar to people for the skills and also improved situational awareness. Being a good team member is beneficial for solo diving for the awareness.

To @jlcnuke , I'd suggest looking at GUE and see if your buddy's condition can be accommodated with a single piece of webbing for the harness. I admit I don't know the extent of his mobility issues obviously. A conversation doesn't hurt. Maybe someone like @johnkendall can chime in?

Because I was at a dive site without buddy this year. I didn’t care if my buddy was GUE or not. I just wanted to dive.

Ten minutes later a guy arrived with a set of doubles. I started talking with him. He was also a gue diver. A few minutes later his buddy arrived.

I could dive with them. I took my camera with my and after the dive I did sent them images.

One week later a gue instructor did contact me because about me and a complain in the Netherlands about solo diving...

I did not even do a solo dive and people were already complaining.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

One week later a gue instructor did contact me because about me and a complain in the Netherlands about solo diving...

So? I'd tell him to go f himself. In my area, there is only one dive site where solo diving isn't allowed (Edmonds Underwater Park). If I'm not diving solo there, it isn't anyone's business.

The point is, GUE fundies is a great skills course. By FAR the best skills course I've ever taken. Best non-skills course was Human Factors in Diving.

The best piece of advice I received prior to taking the course from a GUE diver was "You don't have to drink the Kool Aid, just learn the skills." And that's what I recommend no matter what kind of diving you want to do.

 

[wstorms]

Keeping in mind that "I don't know what I don't know", I can surmise that things such as proper set up of tanks and positioning, hose routing, handing leaks in various locations, etc would all be things that I think would be nice to have training on from someone knowledgeable and experienced in the configuration instead of just "figuring it out on your own". Sure, it probably wouldn't be a 5 day class or anything, but neither is a drysuit class or sidemount etc.

Yeah that's kinda what I figured you would ask, I can see how that could seem a bit much to figure out on your own. But keep in mind that most of the time, your not assembling the doubleset yourself. The LDS will do that for you and the holes in the BP pretty much dictate the positioning (there are some differences that can be made but either you figure it out by playing or you immediately accept the new positioning during training. Not really anything to relearn). Hose routing is a bit trickier, but normally the LDS can set up the set for you as well. Although I think divers should be able to do some minor repairs (like swapping a hose) themselves, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, the LDS should be able to sort that out. Handling leaks is in my opinion a new skill, since this was most likely not yet covered in your previous training. It is a part of any tec course. As long as you are diving recreational, the respons with doubles is exactly the same as with a single tank: if you detect a leak, go up.
There really isn't too much to "learn" about using doubles, especially within recreational limits, but there can be quite some getting used to them. That is probably the reason there are not too many many people taking "how to use doubles" courses (although plenty options are out there, like people mentioned above).
Everything that you might actually need to learn (finesse of setting up your harnes, hose routing, valve drills, S drills) will be covered in any tec course, but you will be able to progress a lot quicker if you don't need to relearn controlling your buoyancy at the same time.

 

[DiverDiverRUOK]

I'm surprised to hear about technical instructors requiring students to have doubles experience prior to Intro to Tech. ITT is the course I use to get students prepared for further technical training (hence the "intro" part...), and that includes spending some time in the pool to get used to the doubles configuration prior to open water dives. For my Advanced Nitrox and Deco Procedures courses, I require students to have either proven experience in doubles or having taking Intro to Tech in doubles, as you should be comfortable in whatever gear configuration you choose before doing deco. I would recommend you avoid an instructor that says "go figure it out on your own" if you are looking for instruction or some additional coaching.

 

[Scott]

I'm surprised to hear about technical instructors requiring students to have doubles experience prior to Intro to Tech. ITT is the course I use to get students prepared for further technical training (hence the "intro" part...), and that includes spending some time in the pool to get used to the doubles configuration prior to open water dives. For my Advanced Nitrox and Deco Procedures courses, I require students to have either proven experience in doubles or having taking Intro to Tech in doubles, as you should be comfortable in whatever gear configuration you choose before doing deco. I would recommend you avoid an instructor that says "go figure it out on your own" if you are looking for instruction or some additional coaching.

This!
I guess some of us have been doing it all wrong. Oh well, I'm not going to change my approach.

 

[rjack321]

So? I'd tell him to go f himself. In my area, there is only one dive site where solo diving isn't allowed (Edmonds Underwater Park). If I'm not diving solo there, it isn't anyone's business.

Since when have people minded their own business?

 

[jlcnuke]

Why not? I solo dive on occasion. Teach a course on it. I frequently recommend GUE fundies or similar to people for the skills and also improved situational awareness. Being a good team member is beneficial for solo diving for the awareness.

To @jlcnuke , I'd suggest looking at GUE and see if your buddy's condition can be accommodated with a single piece of webbing for the harness. I admit I don't know the extent of his mobility issues obviously. A conversation doesn't hurt. Maybe someone like @johnkendall can chime in?

Let me just make it perfectly clear, I have absolutely no intention of doing any courses with GUE. As a I said earlier, I have fundamental issues with the organization (how they state they do things and how various classes of theirs are setup/conducted from reviews of courses and explanations from both students and instructors etc) and I don't want to work with them as a result. I've discussed some of those things in the past so I'm not going to rehash them here, but that's my opinion and there's approximately 0.01% chance that I'll change my mind from anything anyone on Scubaboard types out in a thread without significant changes to various things about the agency. If they were the only agency in the world teaching tech diving, I'd have to seriously consider another way to learn outside of classes. Fortunately, they aren't and I have other places I can go for training. So, thanks for the suggestion, but GUE is not what I'm looking for.