helodriver87
Contributor
From what I've read of Marie's posts, that kind of attitude isn't unusual and pops up in all sorts of different contexts. Some people are just like that I guess.
TDI Intro to Tech or AN/DP?
- Thread starter Kyle0692
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And some people have no idea that NO means NO. End of story. Back away. Quit pushing. Quit being arrogant. Jeez.
helodriver87
Contributor
Err, okay. I know I've said the following before, but I think it merits repeating.
My biggest mistake diving is not taking fundies right after open water (or much, much earlier at least). I would not have earned a rec pass most likely (maybe I would, as I wouldn't have bad habits to break), but hopefully I would have before my provisional timeframe expired. That intense $800 would have saved me so much time and so much money that I wasted in little courses here and there and bought equipment that wasn't right for me. Even if I had to retake the class later to get a rec (or maybe tec) pass, I'd still have saved time and money. I doubt that I would have stuck with the agency, as I enjoy solo diving and photography so much (I was into landscape photography before I got into diving, so I'd venture off by myself to many remote places, as that's what it sometimes takes to the "the shot"). I probably would have gotten into sidemount earlier. Who knows? I might have been cave trained by now.
I know I'd be just so much farther as a diver had I taken fundies much earlier. Some of my buddies joke around and give me a hard time about recommending the course so often on social media, but that course (or UTD Essentials) and Gareth Lock's Human Factors course are the two courses that I will always be recommending to people. Every single person I've convinced to take either course has thanked me afterwards. You don't like GUE or UTD? Okay, nothing stops you from taking a course from another agency where the instructor who teaches the same set of skills with the same performance requirements before continuing. It will make the tech courses just so much easier.
If you have those skills already, great. A simple test dive for the instructor to verify and off you go.
It isn't complicated. The path and time to a serious incident, including death, is just so much shorter with technical diving. I do appreciate what my former student shared with me about T1. I will repeat what I was told before I took fundies: "You don't have to drink the Kool Aid, just go for the skills." And that's what I did, and I'm grateful for the instruction I received.
Bobby
Contributor
Thanks for the positive responses in this thread and the many PM's. I've had a number of PM's asking about how I introduced He in my AN & DP courses, so I thought I would add it to this thread. Before I do that I'll explain the why behind it. IMHO, anything without the why is of little value.
Back in the late 80's and early 90's it was common for to do one deep dive to "X" wreck or cave on air and later or at a different time to do it on He mix. Many might think that this seems crazy now however to understand it we have to understand how things were back then. Nitrox was considered "vodoo" gas, we were still doing deco at 2.0 PPO2 and had a lot of people toxing, and finding He was a good bit more difficult than it was today. There were a lot of variables that went into whether we dove mix or air for a particular dive and a lot of those variables, today, would scrub a dive if we couldn't get mix. It is just what we had at the time.
Back in that time frame I was doing N.E. wrecks and some cave diving. What I recognized as a pattern was that when I did dives on air, on deep dives, I thought the dive went great. Then when I went back on mix I began to realize how much I had missed. Not just seeing things but also recognizing potential hazards and things that could have been a problem. I still hadn't put it all together however I was beginning to see that something was off.
There was a wreck in the N.E. that I was progressively working on getting to the engine room. Back then we didn't use line in wrecks and used "progressive penetration" to learn and memorize the wreck as we slowly went deeper in penetration. I had done the dive a couple of times on air and a few more on mix and was getting very close to my goal. I didn't live in the N.E. so often planning and setup was a bit more tedious for me. The next trip I couldn't get mix so I dove air and I was sure that I would make the engine room over the weekend of diving. As it turned out the conditions were not optimal and I didn't make the progress that I had envisioned. On my last dive of my last day I finally made it to the engine room. This is where it all went side ways.
At this time I was not even considering teaching diving. I had so many things going on in my life, I was young, and had it all in front of me. It took almost another decade before I started teaching scuba diving then moved quickly into becoming a technical instructor. That is where I started to put the pieces together that allowed me to see how there were gaps in the succession of learning. I had a professional racing career and worked with some of the best developing solid stepping stones of learning and experience as racers moved through the ranks from amateur up to professional. I had also been in the military and was exposed to the structured training and adherence to experience there as well.
So when I finally found the engine room I was excited and rather narked from diving air on this trip. I did one of the dumbest things that one can do when diving a wreck. I quickly charged into the room without checking out the surroundings and hazards. After swimming around for a couple of minutes, being so full of myself that I had made it there, I turned to exit. To my horror I found that the wires of the ship, which were laid out along the ceiling, had fallen down from my exhaust bubbles when I entered. It was literally a spiders web begging to entrap me on exit. I worked it for a few minutes trying to move wires away for an exit with no luck. Then I went about looking for an alternate exit, even though I didn't know the route, or if I would be able to exit. All with no luck, then it sank into my thick head, I had probably and stupidly killed myself. Fortunately, as I resigned myself to what I had done and started to calm down, I noticed a possible option. The floor grate for accessing the lower part of the engines was loose. By raising the grate and dropping down I could then raise the grate and push the wires out of the way of the exit. I sure wished that I hadn't done that dive on air.
Now, after a long winded story, though I believe that it helps with understanding that it is hard to know the difference between one dive on air and another on He. I had done it many times in many different dive conditions and thought it was "OK". So when I was teaching AN & DP I obtained a waiver to have my students on air while I was on mix. Back, when I was teaching, the students and instructor had to be on the same gas. I would setup the last dive, convincing the student('s) that it was just a simple dive to complete the requirements for the amount of dives needed for the class, no skills involved. I would then proceed to task load them from gear setup until eventually, during the dive, they fell into a cascade event. I made it mandatory and used it during all of my training that if at any time, the student was given an OOA signal, they must accept the donated regulator without question. At the time just as the student was about to loose control I would then donate my reg, with He mix. After two or three breaths their head cleared and they quickly recognized that it was air that allowed them to fall into the cascade event. If they had been on mix they would have called the dive long before it got out of hand. Every single student that I had for AN & DP was convinced that deep air diving was playing Russian Roulett, with far too many rounds loaded in the chamber. Putting them on mix, during the dive, while they were stressed was the key to demonstrating the difference between air and He.
There are times when air is all that is available. I did some rather deep dives on air to see if something went, when there was no He available. It took years and we still have hopes of returning in the future, however we returned with mix and made some really cool and hopefully important discoveries. Understanding the risk of air and placing limitations is key, IMHO. Whenever there is an option for using He then it is a no brainer. The key is getting students to understand it in a way that they will never forget it.
Back in the late 80's and early 90's it was common for to do one deep dive to "X" wreck or cave on air and later or at a different time to do it on He mix. Many might think that this seems crazy now however to understand it we have to understand how things were back then. Nitrox was considered "vodoo" gas, we were still doing deco at 2.0 PPO2 and had a lot of people toxing, and finding He was a good bit more difficult than it was today. There were a lot of variables that went into whether we dove mix or air for a particular dive and a lot of those variables, today, would scrub a dive if we couldn't get mix. It is just what we had at the time.
Back in that time frame I was doing N.E. wrecks and some cave diving. What I recognized as a pattern was that when I did dives on air, on deep dives, I thought the dive went great. Then when I went back on mix I began to realize how much I had missed. Not just seeing things but also recognizing potential hazards and things that could have been a problem. I still hadn't put it all together however I was beginning to see that something was off.
There was a wreck in the N.E. that I was progressively working on getting to the engine room. Back then we didn't use line in wrecks and used "progressive penetration" to learn and memorize the wreck as we slowly went deeper in penetration. I had done the dive a couple of times on air and a few more on mix and was getting very close to my goal. I didn't live in the N.E. so often planning and setup was a bit more tedious for me. The next trip I couldn't get mix so I dove air and I was sure that I would make the engine room over the weekend of diving. As it turned out the conditions were not optimal and I didn't make the progress that I had envisioned. On my last dive of my last day I finally made it to the engine room. This is where it all went side ways.
At this time I was not even considering teaching diving. I had so many things going on in my life, I was young, and had it all in front of me. It took almost another decade before I started teaching scuba diving then moved quickly into becoming a technical instructor. That is where I started to put the pieces together that allowed me to see how there were gaps in the succession of learning. I had a professional racing career and worked with some of the best developing solid stepping stones of learning and experience as racers moved through the ranks from amateur up to professional. I had also been in the military and was exposed to the structured training and adherence to experience there as well.
So when I finally found the engine room I was excited and rather narked from diving air on this trip. I did one of the dumbest things that one can do when diving a wreck. I quickly charged into the room without checking out the surroundings and hazards. After swimming around for a couple of minutes, being so full of myself that I had made it there, I turned to exit. To my horror I found that the wires of the ship, which were laid out along the ceiling, had fallen down from my exhaust bubbles when I entered. It was literally a spiders web begging to entrap me on exit. I worked it for a few minutes trying to move wires away for an exit with no luck. Then I went about looking for an alternate exit, even though I didn't know the route, or if I would be able to exit. All with no luck, then it sank into my thick head, I had probably and stupidly killed myself. Fortunately, as I resigned myself to what I had done and started to calm down, I noticed a possible option. The floor grate for accessing the lower part of the engines was loose. By raising the grate and dropping down I could then raise the grate and push the wires out of the way of the exit. I sure wished that I hadn't done that dive on air.
Now, after a long winded story, though I believe that it helps with understanding that it is hard to know the difference between one dive on air and another on He. I had done it many times in many different dive conditions and thought it was "OK". So when I was teaching AN & DP I obtained a waiver to have my students on air while I was on mix. Back, when I was teaching, the students and instructor had to be on the same gas. I would setup the last dive, convincing the student('s) that it was just a simple dive to complete the requirements for the amount of dives needed for the class, no skills involved. I would then proceed to task load them from gear setup until eventually, during the dive, they fell into a cascade event. I made it mandatory and used it during all of my training that if at any time, the student was given an OOA signal, they must accept the donated regulator without question. At the time just as the student was about to loose control I would then donate my reg, with He mix. After two or three breaths their head cleared and they quickly recognized that it was air that allowed them to fall into the cascade event. If they had been on mix they would have called the dive long before it got out of hand. Every single student that I had for AN & DP was convinced that deep air diving was playing Russian Roulett, with far too many rounds loaded in the chamber. Putting them on mix, during the dive, while they were stressed was the key to demonstrating the difference between air and He.
There are times when air is all that is available. I did some rather deep dives on air to see if something went, when there was no He available. It took years and we still have hopes of returning in the future, however we returned with mix and made some really cool and hopefully important discoveries. Understanding the risk of air and placing limitations is key, IMHO. Whenever there is an option for using He then it is a no brainer. The key is getting students to understand it in a way that they will never forget it.
OP
Kyle0692
Contributor
On Monday I’ll be meeting up with my instructor for ITT to do a meet and greet, pay for class, and get my training materials.
The next two weeks are pretty busy for me between work and family visiting for Spring Break, so we agreed upon my training to be scheduled sometime in April (TBD). Looks like one academic/gear configuration session, 1-2 pool sessions in a full tech set-up practicing fundamentals, and then 3 dives down south (maybe West Palm) up to 130’ with simulated deco.
Looking forward to the class and will let you guys know how it goes!
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to my thread, definitely have learned a lot.
The next two weeks are pretty busy for me between work and family visiting for Spring Break, so we agreed upon my training to be scheduled sometime in April (TBD). Looks like one academic/gear configuration session, 1-2 pool sessions in a full tech set-up practicing fundamentals, and then 3 dives down south (maybe West Palm) up to 130’ with simulated deco.
Looking forward to the class and will let you guys know how it goes!
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to my thread, definitely have learned a lot.
OP
Kyle0692
Contributor
We’ll see how deep we actually do the dives Marie. If I recall correctly, the Pre-req’s for ITT are pretty light. Only 25 dives and Open Water equivalent - can’t see the number of dives that you circled over above.
While I’m not the most experienced diver in the world at 60 dives, I do have experience down to 120’ on a handful of dives. I would be comfortable diving in the range he suggested. The whole reason why I am doing ITT vs AN/DP is because I was uncomfortable making that large of a jump. If I’m uncomfortable with the training plan after we hash out the details, I’ll make it known. I like the idea of doing simulated deco stops to give me some experience holding my depth for longer periods of time than safety stops, practicing precision buoyancy, and learning to stop at fixed depths on my ascents. I think it would be good training and exposure to this integral part of tech diving.
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