[EBT]

Quote: (Originally Posted by PacketSniffer)

If I don't have the priveledge of knowing RBW or other forums, how will I find this info? I mean, really, shoudn't I be getting it directly from the official source???

Agreed entirely, thats why you should goto the homepage of the agency and search on "standards". IANTD's have been up for ages, I wont speculate about other agencies since I dont know them. Perhaps a lack of speculation in general would be good.

Quote: (Originally Posted by packetsniffer)

I do know that IANTD has been through the ringer lately. So, I'm willing to give some slack. But, a little communication goes a long way.

You'll hear no disagreement, yet what you have is a thread where very few instructors can be bothered to waste their time, since one side of the debate is seen to be 'attacking'. For the record, Im impartial, I dont teach CCR.


I have to agree that the tickets regime has gone a little off kilter. The way I see it though, is that you have options;

• Take a debate with a recommended instructor and see where it goes
• Do you own thing and see where you get (more common than most admit)
• Put up or shut up. Setup your own agency.

The loud bleating going on here prompts me to say;



(shit, have I been arguing??)

[schford]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Genesis)

Responding to a bald assertion such as "everyone will die without mandatory training" can't be done with one line "no they won't."

The original statement is an invalid debating tactic (it carries no evidence) but the only way to get out of "he said/she said" is to introduce facts, which requires you lay a foundation for them.

But Karl - where was that statement made?

Even if it were made what would be wrong with this one sentence respond.

No they won't, over 100 classic kisses were sold with no formal training mandated and there were no fatalities.

You have made your point without losing it, and the viewers attention in pages of response.

[Mike]

And from my memory of adjudicating debating at university, a sure way to a low score wass to resort to ad hominem attacks, or merely critique the style, rather than content, of the oppositions argument.

Eloquent assertions without adequate supporting argument should not be considered more valuable than supported, albeit unwield, presentation of a case.

Karl - I suspect that a lot of people agree with you, I know that I did what I could to get away with paying for the minimum number of 'manditory' courses. However, you should realise that most people here have already sunk that money, and have zero chance of getting it back. So we can't be bothered fighting for no personal gain. Yep - most of what you say is right, but I've already been as screwed as I'm going to be, so it's not going to affect me much.

(And for what it's worth, I've done two full MOD 1 courses on two different units, and was forced to pay for the full course the second time around to be able to take delivery of the unit. There was no viable crossover course option)

Mike

[decoweenie]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Mike)

(And for what it's worth, I've done two full MOD 1 courses on two different units, and was forced to pay for the full course the second time around to be able to take delivery of the unit. There was no viable crossover course option)

Which agency ?

[caveseeker7]

The way I look at it, training is the most basic step to keep me alive under water.
As long as the training is good I"m willing to pay for it. It just doesn"t seem like right place to cut corners. My initial OW cert took a whole week, 12 dives, encompassed most of what OW, AOW and Rescue teach today. Quite some time, effort and money. But worth all of it.

I took ANDI's CSU (Nitrox) class after scanning through various materials. One class, one very good text book, one good instructor, no need to take Nitrox and Adv. Nitrox. Money and time saved, I still walked away with new knowledge and new as well as better skills.

My PRISM instructor was in training, an experienced diver and inexperienced instructor. The latter made things a bit uneven, the former made up for it. He did quite well, and it took place under Pete Readey's hawk-eyed supervision. An added bonus not to be underestimated.

I could have probably racked up the time needed for some sort of cross-over or break from the instructor when I did the Kiss training. But the PRISM and Sport Kiss are quite different in design and operation, and I picked an excellent instructor. So I did the entire course, didn"t even inquire about breaks due to previous training. I wanted to get it all, and I was willing to pay for it. I did get it all, and then some, I couldn"t have ask for a better instructor, better materials (Joe did a great job with the ANDI Kiss manual, even though I had a proof copy I still bought it at retail!) or more thorough training. Worth every minute and every dime.

And believe me, while I had the time, the money took some serious belt tighning. There"s a reason I still don"t have a PRISM.

I have a pretty good idea about rebreathers, how they work, what they should, will and won"t do. But all the theory in the world won"t keep me alive if I lack the skills on the rig I'm using. And I'm nowhere near the skill or experience level where I would even consider skipping training or testing new products.

But one thing I found to be certain:
Take your time and pick your instructor wisely, and what you will get will be priceless.

[Mike]

Quote: (Originally Posted by decoweenie)

Which agency ?

Irrelevant really - tyrany of distance ensures limited choices. (and I believe that the instructor chose which agency to certify us under anyway) Possibly if I spent the $2k and a day each way in travel, it would have been possible to do a crossover.
Actually, I think the answer when I inquired about a crossover was 'yep - costs the same and takes the same amount of time as the full course'

Mike

[Genesis]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Mike)

Karl - I suspect that a lot of people agree with you, I know that I did what I could to get away with paying for the minimum number of 'manditory' courses. However, you should realise that most people here have already sunk that money, and have zero chance of getting it back. So we can't be bothered fighting for no personal gain. Yep - most of what you say is right, but I've already been as screwed as I'm going to be, so it's not going to affect me much.

(And for what it's worth, I've done two full MOD 1 courses on two different units, and was forced to pay for the full course the second time around to be able to take delivery of the unit. There was no viable crossover course option)

Mike

The latter is not necessarily true. What if you want a different unit somewhere down the road?

As for the former (the first highlight), there is a part of human nature that works against fixing these sorts of injustices. The basic distillation of it is "I got hosed and I don't want you not to, because then I feel like I got ripped off even worse.", or "Since I took it in the rear, by God you are gonna take your turn over the table too!"

That's a particularly selfish part of human nature, but it is a position that virtually all people will take, and it complicates fixing this problem immensely. Why do you think that one of our political parties constantly refers to the rich "paying their fair share" when it comes to taxes, even though as a percentage of actual tax receipts they already pay basically all of it? They know that people respond to this, even though if there's a path to hell this is probably one of the better ways to get there.

In any event the reason for people like you to get involved in fixing this is because at some point in the future it is likely you will want to dive a DIFFERENT unit than the one you own now. It may be a unit you know about and lust after, or it may be something that doesn't yet exist.

The time to do something about it isn't when you make the purchase decision, because by then its too late.

[CharlieT]

Help, I can't find a white flag to wave in this posting.

Is it murder if you kill off your fellow Rebreather users by wording them to death?

Karl, I am genuinely envious. You must be a whizz typist, my typing is sooo slow!

Keep up the good work, I wish I could say whether I agree or disagree with you but I didn't have time to read it all.

Stuart, how about all members get an annual word allocation?

Like a carbon allowance, members could then sell their unused allocation to another RBW member. Guess who would be buying it all

Charliet
RIP

[fubari]

Quote: (Originally Posted by CharlieT)

Stuart, how about all members get an annual word allocation? Like a carbon allowance...

I about spewed coffee because of that!

But seriously, who cares if anyone is posting novels?
If lengthy posts are hard to surf through, well - slashdot.org
handles that by showing a few hundred lines plus a link to the
whole thing.

r.e. Genesis(Karl) in particular, I'm glad he is motivated
to keep writing. It doesn't matter whether I agree with
everything he writes - what I find intersting are the ideas
I didn't think of, the questions I didn't imagine.

John G.

[edit]After some thought, I want to alter the last paragraph
to cover pretty much everyone that posts on rbworld; the
variety and quality of ideas I found here are outstanding.
While Karl has a "gift" for thought provoking prose, the
varied reactions to it are what got me thinking about this.[/edit]

[rdmmdr]

karl
keep up the good work.

rick