TDI - Intro to Tech - Necessary?

[Mergulhador do Delray]

The skills you mentioned--buoyancy, trim, propulsion, etc.--need to be good in the tech gear configuration. I thought my skills were great, but I was diving a single Al 80 and in a wetsuit. Then when I set my sights on tech and started using a twinset and drysuit (you being in VA are probably already using a drysuit) I felt like I was learning to dive all over again.

No drysuit! I am seriously allergic to cold. If I need more than 5 mm (maybe 7mm) I have lost all semblance of sanity. But this was the type of answer I was looking for . . . yes, Intro does teach necessary, not just nice, skills. Thanks.

 

[BlueTrin]

No drysuit! I am seriously allergic to cold. If I need more than 5 mm (maybe 7mm) I have lost all semblance of sanity. But this was the type of answer I was looking for . . . yes, Intro does teach necessary, not just nice, skills. Thanks.

I have not done intro to tech but if you go ANDP you will find it much harder if you don’t have already decent trim and you are not comfortable in your equipment.

During my class, some students were struggling to stay flat when doing a valve shutdown drill and were arching and going vertical. They were the ones who had to come back another time to finish the class after practicing more. Granted it could be due to the drysuit fit, but IMHO the ANDP class is fairly easy if you have decent trim and buoyancy.

I would dare to even say that my experience was that the difficulty in the ANDP skills is mostly to do them in trim and keeping a constant depth/neutral buoyancy.

If you can do that, it will be much easier and you can focus on the rest of the class.

 

[rddvet]

As a result, my trim is as horizontal as I want it to be without thinking too much about it, my finning is ok (other than back-finning which still gives me fits),

I am not familiar with gear configuration.

You just answered your own question. You haven't mastered finning techniques and you're unfamiliar with gear configuration. Those are literally the things that are taught in a proper intro to tech class. The problem is, it is very dependent on the instructor. There are a lot of crappy instructors teaching intro to tech who don't even tech dive. They're OW instructors who added intro to tech to their resume. You need to find a good quality course to benefit.
That actually is why fundies is so highly recommended. It's standardized and the instructors must follow the same criteria (which is much higher standards than most intro to tech classes). Fundies in most cases puts you in a better place than an intro to tech course. The big question would be: do it in doubles or do it in a single tank? If you know nothing of doubles and have never dove them, then fundies may not be the place to learn unless you're ok failing the course and having to take another couple days down the road to complete it. Taking a doubles primer first would be smarter. Having said that, I had 2 guys in my class with minimal to no doubles experience. One was so awful, the instructor basically told him for everyone's safety he needed to go back to a single tank to finish the class. The other passed with a rec pass and has to go back to get a tech pass.
At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember getting into tech diving is to take it very very slow and make sure you take the right courses from the right instructor. For me, I'd go doubles primer, dive doubles a few months (25 dives), then fundies, then you can choose to continue the GUE route or go to TDI. With that route, you will be a better diver than you'd ever imagined and much better than most OW instructors who think they're tech divers (like the guy who was told to go to a single tank in my class).
I was tech diving for years before I took fundies. I wish I had taken it from the get-go

 

[rjack321]

No drysuit! I am seriously allergic to cold. If I need more than 5 mm (maybe 7mm) I have lost all semblance of sanity. But this was the type of answer I was looking for . . . yes, Intro does teach necessary, not just nice, skills. Thanks.

Where are you planning on tech diving?

A 5mm wetsuit is marginal, a 7mm wetsuit is pretty much not going to work and you'll need to switch to a drysuit. The reason is that you'll need a whole bunch of lead to stay at a 20ft stop with doubles and empty tanks. Past 130ft all that neoprene is going to compress and you'll need huge quantities of air in a wing to compensate for the suit compression.

There's not much suit compression in a 3mm so in warm waters you can tech dive wet and it's glorious. By the time you get up to 7mm there's just too much compression to make it work. 5mm is borderline but will be 1-2mm thick at 150+ft and you'll be heavy and cold.

 

[Mergulhador do Delray]

Where are you planning on tech diving?

A 5mm wetsuit is marginal, a 7mm wetsuit is pretty much not going to work and you'll need to switch to a drysuit. The reason is that you'll need a whole bunch of lead to stay at a 20ft stop with doubles and empty tanks. Past 130ft all that neoprene is going to compress and you'll need huge quantities of air in a wing to compensate for the suit compression.

There's not much suit compression in a 3mm so in warm waters you can tech dive wet and it's glorious. By the time you get up to 7mm there's just too much compression to make it work. 5mm is borderline but will be 1-2mm thick at 150+ft and you'll be heavy and cold.

Bathwater . Honestly, this is a hobby and I have little tolerance for cold. Perhaps it is the case that drysuit diving is the way to go. That is a question I suppose will be answered over time.

 

[broncobowsher]

The nice part is the drysuit is a great way to stay warm in the water. Watch people who are cold in there 5-7mm wetsuits, and being comfortable in a drysuit.

 

[rjack321]

Bathwater . Honestly, this is a hobby and I have little tolerance for cold. Perhaps it is the case that drysuit diving is the way to go. That is a question I suppose will be answered over time.

Many tech divers actually dive dry everywhere, even places with quite warm water like the red sea. Being able to adjust your thermal protection regardless of depth plus have redundant buoyancy are both assets.

 

[Miyaru]

No drysuit! I am seriously allergic to cold. If I need more than 5 mm (maybe 7mm) I have lost all semblance of sanity. But this was the type of answer I was looking for . . . yes, Intro does teach necessary, not just nice, skills. Thanks.

You're now starting on a road that goes a long way (down).
Imagine you have progressed with dozens of dives. The next dive is 80m/260ft.
Your 5mm wetsuit will be like paper down there and since this dive will not be the first deep dive on mix, the previous dives have reduced your wetsuit to 3-4mm. And unless you're diving near the equator, the water is colder down there.

 

[rddvet]

Many tech divers actually dive dry everywhere, even places with quite warm water like the red sea. Being able to adjust your thermal protection regardless of depth plus have redundant buoyancy are both assets.

Yep, I only dive dry. In the caves, S. Fl dive boats, Mexico, Bonaire, and in June on my upcoming Truk trip. I see no reason for me to where a wetsuit. Sure I get hot in the drysuit, but I get hotter struggling with a wetsuit. Last time we were in Bonaire people looked at us like we were astronauts because we were the only ones in drysuits and rebreathers it seemed.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Intro to Tech worth it? Well, for me it was when I took it in 2007 with a NAUI tech instructor. It made going into my Helitrox class much easier. I had been diving doubles for a while and had close to 75 dives on them and thought I was ok. I was, OK. OK however was not going to be good enough for anything beyond Intro.

The first night I showed up for classroom (there were 2 classroom sessions for my Intro class. Each one started with different ways to die doing tech dives and what I was going to learn to mitigate that. Then we looked at everyone's gear and it got disassembled, configured, some people had things tossed in the trash can to illustrate their worth in tech diving, and then set up properly.
Then it was 2 pool sessions followed by two weekends of OW dives where more things were fine tuned.

When I teach an Intro Class, it's done in the gear the student intends to use for their higher level tech classes and I take the same approach. How many ways you can die, what can be done to mitigate that, what needs to change on your gear, and a few other items such as gas management if you haven't done that yet.
Then we hit the pool and work on getting your buoyancy down to where you can do skills with less than 1ft change in water column position.

Including dropping stage bottles and putting them back on, valve drills, and finning. I wouldn't accept a student for AN/DP who couldn't back kick, do helicopter turn, or frog kick.
It's not fair to students who can and have prepared for tech classes to have to remediate basic skills that should be taught in the Advanced Open Water class.

Then I recommend getting a minimum of 25 dives in before starting another class. Knowing that a competent instructor is going to evaluate you first and if your skills are still shaky, tell you to practice more and be more serious about it.

AN/DP IS NOT THE CLASS TO LEARN TO DIVE DOUBLES OR SIDEMOUNT FOR THE FIRST TIME! It's a waste of the instructors time and the time of other students.

So yes, a good intro class is worth and you should feel like you had one of the the hardest workouts of your life at the end and know that unless you have the things your instructor said you needed down pat, that any further training is liable to be a lesson in frustration. Get those things from the Intro class down and you'll have a butt load of fun in higher level classes while getting challenged and learning a lot.