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IANTD Course Materials - help

6K views 11 replies 8 participants last post by  Ralf 
#1 ·
Hi, I am intending to start an entry level tech course and had decided on starting with IANTD. I sent off for the course materials for some pre-course study. What can I say? except that I have decided that I really dont want a qualification from an agency which insults potential students with this rubbish. Teklite indeed.....

What a lot of Californian Buddhist pseudo science. It appalling. I could tolerate this if there was anything remotely useful for a potential student. All I can remember is photos of some old bloke doing Judo, lot of guff about free radicals and some algebra with little in the way of explanation. Am alone in being put off IANTD by the course material? maybe it's an attempt at humour? Then there is the TAO of Survival, at a hundred quid I don't think I need to go there. Very depressing.

Its back to square one. I thought PADIs Tec Deep Book was a trifle folksy in tone and very US, but am beginning to look at it in a new light!

Is there anyone who has done entry level IANTD tech who has survived this stuff? it would be great to know. Thanks.
 
#2 ·
Again and again we say 'Pick your instructor' and 'Take whatever card they give you'.

I've done courses where I didn't even know who the authority was until I was filling out the forms but I was convinced that by the time the course was over I would know what I needed to know.

Yes, IANTD USA is a bit 'funny' that way.
 
#3 ·
Thank you very much for this post. I had understood the point about the instructor - its difficult to pick from a distance, even with internet 'reputations'. But you can't get away with this kind of stuff nowadays from a commercial organisation, it just doesn't cut it. In English; its taking the piss.
 
#4 ·
IMHO none of the other US techie agency stuff is any better. It's all riddled with errors in the maths and is just plain weird in places. why dazzle people with science when you can baffle them with bullshit and get them to pay for it. none of this stuff is very hard or complex at all.

find an instructor who actually does the type of diving you aspire to and go from there. Just because someone teaches a lot of courses and posts on the internet a lot doesn't necessarily mean they are the best, some of the best instructors don't train that many people a year.
 
#5 ·
I've done an IANTD course- the ART one. The course was fabulous (did it with Ian Dennis) but the course materials were woeful. Really bad, looked like they had been designed by a child, full of awful writing and it came with a 2 page erratum, most of which were with the maths which is inexcusable.
 
#6 ·
We did ART

Yes the course material is dreadful but the course is good. I would speak to your instructor before you bin it as often they have their own much easier ways of doing the calculations. Most of the material is utter twaddle and it is full of glaring errors, incorrect terminology and more worryingly some of the maths is just wrong.

I was chatting with a friend who DM's on the tech courses and he was telling me that they don't send the material out pre course anymore as it is putting people off undergoing the training and work through the book in a classroom setting.

IANTD and TDI courses are very similar though TDI material is slightly better written.

If you do get through it be prepared to be even more annoyed as on one of the exam papers there are 2 multiple choice questions with no right answers. :) There was also a question about re entering the water in the event of missed stops which IANTD advocate. I tried to find any mention of this in the book and failed.
 
#7 ·
Thank you all for advice. I have decided not to try for IANTD certification. I don't find the academic stuff easy and I want to get the best grounding in it before I do the course and the IANTD course material does not attempt to make this or other elements accessible. I would like to maximise my learning from this exercise and so will probably go with TDI as the books look pretty good and up to date.
 
#10 ·
Deco for divers is a fantastic read, very informative and pretty easy to follow. Mark also does classes on decompression theory which are really good, I can also vouch for him as a great 'in water' instructor too.

I've done one IANTD course, I wasn't given any materials to read, but, the actual teaching was fantastic and my diving has certainly improved. I wouldn't worry too much about the books themselves, all you need to know are the equations that are relevant to what you're working out and how to use them. You can look that up on the internet for free!

Before you sign up for anything, with any agency, spend time talking with the instructor - not one of their colleagues, but the one who will actually teach you. Visit them if you can (body language is a valuable thing!) and assess them and how comfortable you feel around them. That will have the biggest impact on your progress in the water and what you ultimately get out of the course.

Hope that makes sense :)
 
#11 · (Edited)
TekLite - The Complete Guide to ... Advanced Recreational Trimix.

Seriously... What a joke. Complete guide? Complete?

I have read the book though, and it is not as bad as it first seems. But light it is.

The equations in chapter 1 are given, not explained, and I actually had to derive them myself to check for typos. A chapter like that could have been written in a different manner. We have computers that compute. Understanding the principles behind and the general trends would be more important. But hey, this must be the way they teach nurses to do medicine calculations. It is easier for me to derive from scratch than to memorize that crap. And hey, it's really called the Variable Permeability Model, VPM, and not Variable Permeable Membrane. On page 8 this book finally presents the oh so important paragraph "What is a dive computer?". The rest of the chapters 1 and 2 fail to impress. Oxygen, narcosis and dcs are then explained, at an elementary level.

You should however not underestimate the psychology chapter. That chapter is probably the most important in the book. You should read every word. It is really important. I have seen a diver almost drown because of failing mental control. I have seen, and experienced, the worse effects of peer pressure. If your instructor doesn't tell you how your mind could kill you, you're screwed.

If you want to understand things then perhaps you read Powells Deco for divers. It is a splendid book. The topics on surface tension and supersaturation will give you a glimpse of hope of understanding offgassing.
 
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