Starting Technical diving GUE Vs TDI VS PADI?

[Superlyte27]

Time in the water, solid skills to manage task loading, the ability to learn and revise the theory, and the ability to 'tune' your gear to work for you, these are a few things to make you a good technical diver. A good instructor (but also one the compliments you) and a solid amount of time and effort, you'll be fine. If you don't like to be taught, don't use an instructor that only likes to teach, find one that is good at coaching and mentoring you. You do your best learning away from your instructor after your training, so make you thoroughly understand the 'why', not just the 'how'.

I'm very curious about GUE, its not available in my area and I've never met a diver that has shared they were GUE. Short of being trained in the same manner and having a common gear configuration, I'm really curious as to what makes them better divers. They've paid a lot more money and done a lot more training dives, but once everyone hits the 50 tech dive mark I'd be very interested if there is a difference. My buoyancy on the first dive back from a break is not exceptional, that is not a mark against the agency or my instructor.

I think the biggest thing is a course where you know EXACTLY what’s expected. You must be able to maintain buoyancy with +/- this amount of deviation. You must be in horizontal trim, you must be able to master these kicks, and how they define “mastery”

Jim Wyatt does the same thing. You can’t swim with your hands ever. You can’t stir silt, ever, you can’t impact the ceiling or the floor, can’t frog kick, you’re not passing his cavern class. Bad attitude, bad buoyancy, bad habits with gear maintenance, your not passing.

it’s what he taught me and it’s what I’ve taught my students.

a few instructors scattered through the agencies are thorough like this, and all the GUE instructors I’ve seen.

 

[rddvet]

a few instructors scattered through the agencies are thorough like this, and all the GUE instructors I’ve seen.

That’s a good explanation. The reason I recommend gue to people is that with gue you’re pretty much guaranteed high standards. You get the same with great non-gue instructors. The problem is being able to find those great ones. I’ve been lucky enough to be around cave country enough to have gotten the low down. But even I had a pretty bad instructor experience with someone a friend referred me to. For someone not spending a lot of time around a good tech community, it can be impossible to know who the really good non-gue instructors are. Gue makes it easier for someone to be likely to Get a good instructor even without knowing much about the instructor going into it.

 

[ginti]

There is a certain subset of dives where the JJ in the official configuration is fine. Then there's every other dive. Including long range cave dives (crossover to the rb80?) or anything remote where topping up your 50s is hard. Or anywhere they won't actually fill the 50s properly. Or anywhere you have to walk lots - like sumps

I wasn't thinking about cave diving. There are only two GUE instructors currently teaching the jj-ccr cave course; I think the reason is that jj works fine in caves only in some very particular conditions.

I was more thinking about deep sea exploration. And, of course, for big group dives (always in the sea, for instance wreck hunting). What do you think about these scenarios?

 

[jale]

I wasn't thinking about cave diving. There are only two GUE instructors currently teaching the jj-ccr cave course; I think the reason is that jj works fine in caves only in some very particular conditions.

I was more thinking about deep sea exploration. And, of course, for big group dives (always in the sea, for instance wreck hunting). What do you think about these scenarios?

if these scenarios are your reality, you should know the answer, shouldn't you?
or is it a rhetorical question?

 

[ginti]

if these scenarios are your reality, you should know the answer, shouldn't you?
or is it a rhetorical question?

This is not my reality (yet). As I said before, I am going to tec 1 soon, so I need another couple of years before doing some deep sea exploration.

I asked that question because I want to learn, and I'd like to have a wide point of view when I will need to make a choice.

So these aren't my scenarios, and it isn't rhetorical

 

[KenGordon]

I wasn't thinking about cave diving. There are only two GUE instructors currently teaching the jj-ccr cave course; I think the reason is that jj works fine in caves only in some very particular conditions.

I was more thinking about deep sea exploration. And, of course, for big group dives (always in the sea, for instance wreck hunting). What do you think about these scenarios?

I have a JJ and have dived with GUE JJ divers in the sea. That week my max was 60 but they went a bit deeper, 70 maybe, on one dive. This was Norway, so boat based and without too much lugging about.

The GUE JJ is not like a JJ or any other mainstream CCR. It is quite heavy with the bigger cylinders and the planning is not the same. I believe that to begin with you had to have done Tec 1 and 2 before training on CCR. I could be wrong about that. In any case it is not like doing TDI mod 1 which I think a Rescue diver can start with.

You are in France, you could do JJ mod1 at Chepstow with Dive-Tech: TDI Nitrox, Helitrox, Trimix and technical diver training courses with instructor Mark Powell and be sure of a good experience. In fact JJ are quite controlling of Instructor authorisation, so much of the extra assurance you might expect from GUE is there already.

Intro To Tech is a cheap and easy way to test whether you get on with an instructor, it is useful in itself. Doing ANDP would be optional if going the CCR way, but does mean you get to do proper dives from the start, but you will be doing a bunch of simpler divers no matter what. A twinset may have a place in your life to bank trimix and ANDP then CCR is less likely to be overwhelming.

 

[ginti]

The GUE JJ is not like a JJ or any other mainstream CCR. It is quite heavy with the bigger cylinders and the planning is not the same. I believe that to begin with you had to have done Tec 1 and 2 before training on CCR. I could be wrong about that. In any case it is not like doing TDI mod 1 which I think a Rescue diver can start with.

The only prerequisite for the JJ is tech 1 now.

Since you dived with people using this configuration, do you believe it is valuable in the kind of dives you did?

You are in France, you could do JJ mod1 at Chepstow with Dive-Tech: TDI Nitrox, Helitrox, Trimix and technical diver training courses with instructor Mark Powell and be sure of a good experience. In fact JJ are quite controlling of Instructor authorisation, so much of the extra assurance you might expect from GUE is there already.

Intro To Tech is a cheap and easy way to test whether you get on with an instructor, it is useful in itself. Doing ANDP would be optional if going the CCR way, but does mean you get to do proper dives from the start, but you will be doing a bunch of simpler divers no matter what. A twinset may have a place in your life to bank trimix and ANDP then CCR is less likely to be overwhelming.

There are too many reasons for me to follow the GUE path, so I am going to stick with it for the moment...

 

[johnkendall]

This is not my reality (yet). As I said before, I am going to tec 1 soon, so I need another couple of years before doing some deep sea exploration.

I asked that question because I want to learn, and I'd like to have a wide point of view when I will need to make a choice.

So these aren't my scenarios, and it isn't rhetorical

Most of the people replying to these kind of questions have never trained as a GUE CCR diver. The GUE rigged JJ is comfortable to dive, the larger backgas cylinders mean you have instant access to a lot of bailout gas very quickly, without resorting to dangerous or complex fast stage switches. Like anything it's a compromise. You do need to be able to fill the backgas cylinders when they get to a certain pressure, but you don't use much gas on each dive (between 10 and 20bar depending on the depth). For example last summer I did a week of diving in Scraps flow and didn't need to fill my backgas at all, so that's 5 days, 10 dives all in the 30-40m depth range on one fill. On the Mars project we tend to top up backgas about every 3 days. That can definitely be considered remote, as we have to ship in everything we need for the project including the gas filling logistics.
For cave diving it works nicely as long as the cave isn't too small, but at the point anything backmounted doesn't work either. Last week I was in France doing 75m deep dives in the cave there with upto about 7 hours in water.

The comments I see about the CCR mirror what we used to see about the GUE OC config, now however when you look at the majority of tech training, most people are using something similar to GUE.

Hth
John

 

[jale]

This is not my reality (yet). As I said before, I am going to tec 1 soon, so I need another couple of years before doing some deep sea exploration.

I asked that question because I want to learn, and I'd like to have a wide point of view when I will need to make a choice.

So these aren't my scenarios, and it isn't rhetorical

That was my underlining point (sorry if that was not clear). You need many different kind of experiences with different set-ups in order to be flexible enough to confront all logistics and dive situations you will encounter.
Be like a sponge and get different points of views.

 

[jale]

Most of the people replying to these kind of questions have never trained as a GUE CCR diver. The GUE rigged JJ is comfortable to dive, the larger backgas cylinders mean you have instant access to a lot of bailout gas very quickly, without resorting to dangerous or complex fast stage switches. Like anything it's a compromise. You do need to be able to fill the backgas cylinders when they get to a certain pressure, but you don't use much gas on each dive (between 10 and 20bar depending on the depth). For example last summer I did a week of diving in Scraps flow and didn't need to fill my backgas at all, so that's 5 days, 10 dives all in the 30-40m depth range on one fill. On the Mars project we tend to top up backgas about every 3 days. That can definitely be considered remote, as we have to ship in everything we need for the project including the gas filling logistics.
For cave diving it works nicely as long as the cave isn't too small, but at the point anything backmounted doesn't work either. Last week I was in France doing 75m deep dives in the cave there with upto about 7 hours in water.
The comments I see about the CCR mirror what we used to see about the GUE OC config, now however when you look at the majority of tech training, most people are using something similar to GUE.

Hth
John

I am a GUE trained diver but not CCR.
I have always been thinking about the same regarding the backmount gas but where I differ is about the place of the RB.
In my view, by placing it, in berween tanks it make everything a bit more logistically chalenging. Personaly, I judt add a side tube RB or a front RB and nothing change from the basic oc config (beside xtra dil hose of course).
So why GUE chosed the JJ and adapted instead of adapting a RB?