Typical tdi deco procedures advanced nitrox course length.

[broncobowsher]

Ask the instructor you are planning on using. The above is a rough guideline. But the instructor you pick may have his/her own timeline. Mine was a couple of months, of a weekend here and there that fit our schedules.

 

[rddvet]

I also place a heavy emphasis on AN/DP being a blue water deco program. If you live in Florida and ever think you'll go diving down south, you're going to be doing drift deco -- the first time you do that shouldn't be on your own.

Kudos for that. I wish that was more common in cave country. I took the typical 4 or 5 day AN/DP in cave country years ago. It was a decent enough class (nothing outstanding in retrospect) but was more focused on deco as it's related to cave diving. Now that I have the rebreather I'm really interested in doing some more serious boat diving, but lack of experience with OW deco procedures is one of the things that's stopped me. And it's not like you can show up on a boat and buddy up with a random instabuddy for a deco dive. In retrospect I wish we'd done OW skills in more depth and done a boat dive or two. I figure at this point I'll get the experience when I take CCR Trimix

 

[WinfieldNC]

I was able to finish in 6 dives but we spent a lot more than the required 6 hours in the classroom. I had over 250 dives going in. My instructor admitted to over-teaching but that was fine with me. I traveled to SE FL from NC for my training. My first day after landing I was in the classroom for about 5 hours. The next morning two dives and then an additional 5 hours reviewing and preparing for the next day. It continued like this. Then about 2 hours after the last two dives. So for me it was 6 dives and about 17 hours in the classroom.

I thought I was fully prepared going in by reading and completing the online exams but being able to regurgitate that information on the spot was completely different. I had also read Deco for Divers by Mark Powell before going down to FL. I highly recommend reading it. It helped a lot.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I started breaking up the class. AN one 3 day weekend and DP a month or so later as a 4 day weekend. What I have found is that now, the students are more relaxed, have more time to work on skills, and end up as better divers.
AN doesn't require depth. It requires time so we get 5 dives of an hour or more each that are strictly skills over and over. Communication, buddy skills, bottle handling, emergency response, etc. Then I give them a list of things to work on and polish for DP.
When they show up for DP they are much more prepared because they've usually spent time drilling on their own.
It allowed me to integrate a two man team with another student who did AN in another team.
On the DP course it took 10 minutes of the first dive to have them mesh into a solid team.
The next 4 dives went very well. They ended up with 10 dives for the class.
Scheduling was easier, they weren't wiped out after dive 10, and unless someone wants to pay more for a one week class, I'll do this from now on.

And because we do classroom before, during SI's, and after the dives. The days are 8-10 hours long. Or more if necessary.

 

[Efka76]

For me TDI Sidemount / AN / DP / Helitrox class took 10 days.

 

[kensuf]

Kudos for that. I wish that was more common in cave country. I took the typical 4 or 5 day AN/DP in cave country years ago. It was a decent enough class (nothing outstanding in retrospect) but was more focused on deco as it's related to cave diving. Now that I have the rebreather I'm really interested in doing some more serious boat diving, but lack of experience with OW deco procedures is one of the things that's stopped me. And it's not like you can show up on a boat and buddy up with a random instabuddy for a deco dive. In retrospect I wish we'd done OW skills in more depth and done a boat dive or two. I figure at this point I'll get the experience when I take CCR Trimix

Doing deco in a cave is so easy compared to while hanging onto an anchor line in current or drifting in blue water. It's really like comparing apples and french fries (not even two types of fruit).

 

[rddvet]

Doing deco in a cave is so easy compared to while hanging onto an anchor line in current or drifting in blue water. It's really like comparing apples and french fries (not even two types of fruit).

That seems about right. Before I ever started technical training I did a dive on the spiegel grove and encountered major current which made it very tough getting back to the anchor line and to hang on it once there. At that point I really had no knowledge on appropriate gas management and with all of the extra work and time I got into some deco and came close to running out of gas decoing out on backgas. My skills and gas management are night and day different from those days, but it's still something I remember well. It's partly what's slowed down my move to OW technical dives. I know there's things I haven't experienced and am not comfortable going it alone. Not sure when ccr trimix will be, but I plan to focus on both caves and OW. I think fundies is first though. My wife and I feel as though we're good divers, but the more we get into our diving we realize we could be better, especially with OW team ascents and general team dynamics. We do almost of all of our diving together nowadays, and I think that degrades team dynamics since we know each other so well. So I think fundies can be an aid prior to moving on to ccr trimix. The big question is whether we'd benefit more from taking fundies together or separate so we can work on team skills with people we don't know.

 

[kensuf]

You know.. I make my students spend a lot of time at Hudson Grotto for this very reason, it's really a good place to practice shooting bags and doing OW ascents. I spent last Sunday there with two guys working on normoxic trimix. We're supposed to be down in Pompano today diving the Lowrance but something came up this weekend that kind of changed our plans.

They are cave divers, they only want to do cave diving, but I made them spend a day at Blue Grotto, a day at Hudson and I'm making them do their final two days in the ocean.

 

[Marie13]

I’m really interested in learning how the locals do deco on Great Lakes wrecks with fixed mooring lines when the line is really jerking due to wave action at the surface. Jon line or do they shoot a lift bag to deco next to the line? Dang near had my arm pulled out of my shoulder doing a safety stop on the line with 3-4ft waves topside last weekend.

 

[RyanT]

@Marie13, if there isn't a strong current running, you can get neutral and keep a loose grip on the line. When the line jerks up and down, let it slide through your hand. This method isn't perfect and won't hold you perfectly still. But with a little practice learning to anticipate the pulls, you'll find that it really alleviates a lot of the jerking. You can also do your deco stops deeper than required. You lose some off-gassing efficiency and add to your overall deco time, but its sometimes worth the improvement in comfort.