Trimix Deep Dive Prerequisite

[Nick_Radov]

And to everyone else that agreed,......from what I've read about the GUE Fundamentals class it is difficult to even get a rec pass. I've read that Divemasters, cave divers and instructors have had issues. I thought the other courses would prepare me to GUE Fundies. Is everyone saying the opposite is true, take GUE funnies first??? Is my logic flawed? Seriously though, with this being the beginning of the year, this is the best time to find out.

I don't know the exact statistics but my Facebook feed is full of divers who pass Fundamentals on the first try. Don't believe everything that you read. When in doubt go straight to the source and ask an actual Fundamentals instructor what the pass rate is. Even if you fail you'll still learn useful skills, and can always go back and demonstrate the necessary skills to your instructor in order to get certified.

 

[Wibble]

I don't know the exact statistics but my Facebook feed is full of divers who pass Fundamentals on the first try. Don't believe everything that you read. When in doubt go straight to the source and ask an actual Fundamentals instructor what the pass rate is. Even if you fail you'll still learn useful skills, and can always go back and demonstrate the necessary skills to your instructor in order to get certified.

Of course there's plenty of people who pass fundies first time. However, there's plenty of people who weren't exposed to "good" skills prior to taking fundies so had no way of preparing for some of the most difficult tasks a diver does: literally hovering motionless above a 6m/20ft platform.

I'll be the first to admit that I "failed" fundies (got a "provisional pass"). I took away so much from the course and practised all the skills learned until the skills were up to scratch.

For the avoidance of doubt, fundies was probably the most important course I ever took.

 

[Nick_Radov]

Of course there's plenty of people who pass fundies first time. However, there's plenty of people who weren't exposed to "good" skills prior to taking fundies so had no way of preparing for some of the most difficult tasks a diver does: literally hovering motionless above a 6m/20ft platform.

Fundamentals is an introductory level course. Students generally shouldn't try to prepare for it beyond reading the course materials and checking their gear. Attempting to prepare by practicing skills before their class starts is likely to just engrain bad habits.

Ironically, students with extensive experience are often more likely to fail Fundamentals because it takes longer to unlearn bad habits. A student fresh out of an OW class may be able to learn the GUE approach to skills more readily.

 

[rjack321]

So what would be a proper plan and timeline? It's why I posted here in the first place.

Practice diving wing setup (20-30 dives)
- Take GUE Fundies
- After rec pass, dive SM setup (20-30 dives)
- Take ANDP
- Dive/practice techniques taught in ANDP (20-30 dives)
- Take Trimix

Rushed is an understatement...

Actually practicing the GUE-F skills, like being able to shoot an SMB without yo-yoing all over or an air share ascent with reasonable stops and minimal yo-yoing doesnt just magically happen. More like 4 to 6 months and 50-75 dives for most divers.

Getting a SM setup without really knowing what you are doing, a good mentor, and/or someone to really critique you can take forever. Assuming you aren't just fantasizing that you can figure out all the flaws in your initial setup (and there will be many tweaks needed). I would say starting SM to AN/DP is a solid year alone, 50-100 dives.

GUE-F to SM to AN/DP to trimix is definitely not a 1 year less than 100 dive process. More like 3 or 4 years and 250+ dives. You have to make regular and consistent deposits into the Bank of Neptune to accumulate the actual wealth of knowledge to be an asset at trimix depths instead of a liability to yourself or others.

 

[Wibble]

Fundamentals is an introductory level course. Students generally shouldn't try to prepare for it beyond reading the course materials and checking their gear. Attempting to prepare by practicing skills before their class starts is likely to just engrain bad habits.

Ironically, students with extensive experience are often more likely to fail Fundamentals because it takes longer to unlearn bad habits. A student fresh out of an OW class may be able to learn the GUE approach to skills more readily.

Fundies is an introductory course.

However, if the best you've ever experienced is flappy leg finning, using hands to move, ankle weights, and follow-the DiveMASTER diving, then it's a massive hill to climb.

Splitting scuba diving into the two categories of recreational and technical, it really helps for recreational people to be exposed to the standards and equipment (e.g. wing & longhose) and to see the superior core skills in practice.

It's interesting that "techies" are often seen as elitist and dismissed as being unnecessary if doing recreational diving. I've also seen some forms of inverted snobbery where recreational divers refuse to consider longer or deeper as the No Deco! mantra is used.

Fundies -- or its equivalent -- should be the first "technical" course anyone does. For that you need some preparation and pre-existing skills otherwise that course will be horrendously difficult. The core skills you learn on fundies take time to master AND you need to have the environment to practice and learn pre or post course. Better still is the course is split into two with weeks in between to practice.

If you've no one around you with good skills or who are willing to help you practice, it's really hard to develop.

 

[Germie]

I really don't agree that fundies or equivalent is the first technical course that must be done. For some it can be usefull, but for others it is just a waiste of time and money.
I see people coming for adv. rec. trimix (equivalent of andp and decompressiondiving) and some are ready for it, they have good basic skills and others don't. Then I teach them in this course. If you see this as also a fundies equivalent course, then I agree. But if you want people to take a complete course, I don't agree. We do a 'meet and greet' dive before starting a course and we discuss what is needed.

Also the way 'how fast can someone go?' is depending on the individual diver and the willing to practise and the time a diver has to practise. Some divers can do all the technical courses in 6 months. Others need years. As said talent plays a role, but also how many time do you want to invest. And the last one is maybe the most critical one.

And sometimes requirements are quite open. For example the 25 dives between 40 and 60m before going to full trimix after normoxic trimix. I signed up just a few months after my normoxic course for full trimix. On arrival the instructor asked me about my experience. I told him without lies that I have that 25 dives and exactly that 25 dives, but there is not written that it is forbidden to do these dives as 'hit and go' with a single tank, a kind of diving I have done before starting tech to get experience in deep diving. So I told him about a trip on real normoxic level, had some videos from that. And told him about my favorite 18 liter steel tank to do dives up to 56m on air as a recreational diver. This also meaned that my normoxic course did not bring me any new depths. My cmas 3* cert was already a 60m cert. I have done that full trimix course without problems.

If divers come to me and I ask about the prerequisits and they tell me such things, I just laugh and then we go for the 'meet and greet' dive. I prefer divers telling the truth over divers that lie about it. I know from divers that wanted to become cave instructor and wrote in their liebooks 3 times 20 minutes instead of 1 cavedive of 60 minutes to get the 150 'cavedives'. And I find it sad that these things happen. You cannot have enough experience to teach cave then. Also with some agencies you can become full trimix instructor after just doing the course yourself. I am happy that I had the real experience before signing up for these courses and I still build up more experience. Every dive you build up more experience.

So the conclusion: do your deep dives on the way that you fits best. And if you are lazy and do it just 'touch and go' without any reason to calculate things, tell it your instructor when you start your next course. He cannot refuse you, but be open about your experience. And for sure don't lie by multiplying a 60 minute dive to 30m in 3 dives of 20minutes to 30m. Better have some real experience by lazy dives than lying and not have any experience.
Don't rush things but if you have time to practise a lot, you can go faster than the diver that don't want to invest time. I don't speak about money for the courses, remember there is not cheap technical diving at all.

 

[Tigerpaw]

In addition to receiving excellent advice on how to best utilize accumulating deep dives for the Trimex prerequisite, I wish to thank you all for enlightening me on the realistic time frame of taking the advanced nitrox/trimex certs. Not discouraged at all, just glad I received proper information on planning and approaching the training. So it'll be GUE Fundies first and I'll go from there!

 

[Sebs]

Honest question but why bother with GUE rec fundies in single backmount when you ultimately want to dive TDI tech sidemount? It just sounds like time better spent getting even more comfortable in sidemount. If I was in your position, I'd find a competent sidemount instructor and do tdi intro to tech with them. Especially if you want to continue with TDI for tech classes, ITT revises all the fundamentals required for your AN/DP such as buoyancy, trim, finning, smb deployment, mask switch etc.

If you really want the attention to detail from GUE, there are TDI instructors who have taken GUE fundies/are GUE instructors. I'm sure they'll happily teach the GUE curriculum in your TDI intro to tech course.

 

[Tigerpaw]

Honest question but why bother with GUE rec fundies in single backmount when you ultimately want to dive TDI tech sidemount? It just sounds like time better spent getting even more comfortable in sidemount. If I was in your position, I'd find a competent sidemount instructor and do tdi intro to tech with them. Especially if you want to continue with TDI for tech classes, ITT revises all the fundamentals required for your AN/DP such as buoyancy, trim, finning, smb deployment, mask switch etc.

If you really want the attention to detail from GUE, there are TDI instructors who have taken GUE fundies/are GUE instructors. I'm sure they'll happily teach the GUE curriculum in your TDI intro to tech course.

I actually took ITT with sidemount configuration and 2 weeks after that I took TDI Technical sidemount with the same instructor. I enjoyed both classes and my instructor said I did well for a 1st timer. Most his students have a rec sidemount experience, whereas I had none.

In my initial comment about doing sidemount dives, I was wanting to do 25-30 practice/training dives in sidemount to get proficient and then move on to ANDP/Trimex and GUE. The responses I received from this thread indicated I would have been better suited to take GUE Fundies before sidemount.

 

[Sebs]

What are you hoping to get out of your GUE fundies training?

Maybe this is more directed towards others but does GUE fundies give you significantly better training than ITT + AN/DP with a competent and thorough instructor? Or at least offset the monetary cost and opportunity cost?

Especially for someone who is only interested in sidemount and has no real interest in pursuing any other GUE diving?