Just out of curiosity, what other instructors have you had for advanced technical courses? What is your basis for comparison between Chatterton and other instructors?
That’s a great point - I’m only thru tri mix, never took itt and those were thru John.
With that said, I’ve dove with two other instructors teaching an/deco (virtually the whole class) and seen their class materials - another instructor wanted to teach it but he really teaches nothing newer than 2000, the few I’ve meet that went thru his class really struggle in the technical sense.
I can’t count the number of rec instructors I’ve witnessed - some are great, some barely teach you anything.
My goal was to dive 150-170’ max but mostly in the 100-130 range just extending bottom time. After the wreck class, yea that peaks my interest somewhat too.
I looked high and low for an instructor, I just didn’t want another BS class, I wanted to learn something - I wanted to be challenged. Up to that point, the DM class was the only slight challenge I had faced. I understand slightly this gotta dive pretty stuff - I do that already, I’m not tooting my own horn - buoyancy and trim picking up and dropping is not a problem, boom drills neutral are easy somewhat, I suck at stowing a 7’ hose in side mount but maybe one day the clouds will part.
I completed the TDI stuff online and truthfully, it wasn’t really that much, for me that is - I like the physics portion of diving, I wanted someone relate all that into technical real world diving, something they had done. The idea that it was a little bit of outside thinking makes it so much the better - realistically, the mainstream line of thinking is out there for everyone to see, read about and witness - it’s the outside thinking that you don’t hear about because it causes scandles such as this.
Of the four diving classes I took, I feel somewhat lacking in tri mix but he’s there to answer questions - I don’t dive that way much anyways but it’s something I want to know better than what I know now - I don’t even know that I could tell you what was lacking. The diving skills, lack of focus on diving skills - that doesn’t bother me at all because I’m confident in my diving skills, aside from the long hose thing.
So back to the point of your question, what would I have learned differently from a different instructor - focusing more on the skills wasn’t what I needed or wanted. I feel I got a great first hand real person understanding of the deco physiology, I learned a lot about stress and prevention, dive planning etc.... I’m just not confident that the average instructor would have given me the what I call extra outside the book real world stuff. Yes, the dive skills are important, aside from the valve drills, I don’t remember much else being new and that’s stuff you can go thru the motions on your own doing.
I’m typing on my phone, dealing with contractors and my Spanish sucks - I’ll answer more later tonight