BSAC Sports Diver - Deco diving

[Ivon]

Saddly no you can only dive to 35m, you need Dive leader to go deeper and after build up dive are qualified to 50m. The other reason for doing it is i have dived deeper in the past on air and dont fancy doing it to 50m so want to go Trimix. You need the ERD course to do this. Hoped this helps.
Ivon.

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Janos

Interesting. Does this change the depth you are qualified to dive to? I genuinely don't know the answer.

Janos

Janos,

The grade is SD so 35m. ERD is not a grade.

Adrian

[Janos]

Originally Posted by NarkedOFF

Saddly no you can only dive to 35m, you need Dive leader to go deeper and after build up dive are qualified to 50m. The other reason for doing it is i have dived deeper in the past on air and dont fancy doing it to 50m so want to go Trimix. You need the ERD course to do this. Hoped this helps.
Ivon.

Thanks. I think that the Trimix Course qualifies you to 70m, even as a Sports Diver and was wondering if ERD did something similar. Although I must admit I'm on dodgy ground here and not too sure of my facts.

Janos

[Ivon]

You would have to be Dive leader to do Trimix and only then could you do the Normix course that is to 60m. Full Trimix is then to 100m

[jptaylor9]

Originally Posted by Janos

Thanks. I think that the Trimix Course qualifies you to 70m, even as a Sports Diver and was wondering if ERD did something similar. Although I must admit I'm on dodgy ground here and not too sure of my facts.

Janos

BSAC say a maximum of 70m or limit of your qualification, on a branch dive.

As I did TDI Entry Level Trimix it qualifies me to 60m only, so that's the max I can do "on a branch dive".

But, on non-branch dives, i've been to 95m

EDIT: If you did TDI advanced Trimix which qualifies you to 100m, you could still only do 70m on a BSAC "branch dive".

[ray]

Hi.

We seem to be moving away from Trikys question. You should be able to do deco dives at sport diver level.

If you have gained this qualification in our BSAC club you are allowed to do deco dives, we definitely encourage divers to move on up the qualification ladder through experience diving with well qualified divers, who help less qualified divers get the hands on experience they need, after all we all had to learn.

[Nick Kay]

1. SD is limited to 35m

2. ERD just adds the ability to do "accelerated deco" / cut your own tables

3. If you do Normoxic Trimix you're still limited to 35m

Of course, if you want to do a non-branch dive under your TDI ticket, thats another matter

However, why would you want to do ERD/Trimix without doing DL - doesn't make sense to me...

[Janos]

Originally Posted by Nick Kay

1. SD is limited to 35m

2. ERD just adds the ability to do "accelerated deco" / cut your own tables

3. If you do Normoxic Trimix you're still limited to 35m

Of course, if you want to do a non-branch dive under your TDI ticket, thats another matter

However, why would you want to do ERD/Trimix without doing DL - doesn't make sense to me...

Are you sure about 3? I just had a quick search on the BSAC website and can't find anything that mentions BSAC grades and trimix. It just says that they can go to 70m, or the limit of their mix ticket. A DL / AD / FCD is qualified to 50m through BSAC but can go to 70m on mix, so I'm wondering why the same doesn't apply to SD.

I thought that the new BSAC trimix qualification was open to Sports Divers and qualified them to 70m. However I can't remember where I heard this, so i wouldn't trust it. And I thought that all of the SDCs were going to be open to SD (including Trimix) I though this slightly odd at the time so would not be suprised if it has changed.

Janos

[Nick Kay]

Hi Janos

But surely, you're still a SD, so you're limited by that fact, i.e. you could dive Trimix to 35m or you could accelerate deco to 35m

Of course, if its not a BSAC / Branch dive then thats something completely different - and if you chose to do a 60m Trimix dive as a BSAC SD / TDI normoxic trimix diver & something went wrong???

[Gareth J]

Hi All

Don't want to start a bun fight but all the depth limits are recommendations, rather than rules. The BSAC has very few rules.

That said as a general rule I follow the recommendations (if you have an incident outside the recommendations you have greater problems justifying the risk assessment).

I have dived with sports divers to 50m in the past, who where certainly more experienced & capable than Advanced Divers!

Although I recently had the interesting position of refusing an Advanced diver permission to dive but allowing the Sports Diver to dive on a 45m wreck. The Sports diver was more than capable, dive fit, & diving with a regular experienced buddy. The advanced diver had only done 1 dive this year!

In the 'Old days' our branch used to 'invite' Sports divers onto the more adventureous trips (deeper dives), & develop the Sports divers. This was purely on an ability basis. This took precidence over the diving grade.
I believe it was actually safer, than the current policy of basing the diving on the grade that the HSE / liability society has now fostered.

When I started ability was king, grade - irrelevent. Now the grade is king, ability comes a poor second.
Along with the attitude it's always someone elses fault, & not taking personnal responsibity for ones decissions/actions.

(Personnal rant over)

Gareth