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>I believe they offer "underwater  MODELING classes"  (at least in the U.S.)
>in addition to the mixed gas classes and I hardly think this would be 
>classified as a technical diving.

Isn't that "Enriched Air Underwater Modeling"? :-)

Also, on the basic/advanced nitrox front, the shop at which I took the
classes now offers the advanced nitrox class instead of basic nitrox,
so it's not necessary to get (or pay for) two separate classes.  The
instructor was one of the people pushing for the "advanced" cert because
NNI/NNII don't fit much of the diving around here, and he didn't want
to make people go through the whole technical nitrox course just to be
able to use, say, a 40% mix instead of 36% for a no-deco dive.

Of course, there are plenty of people who can "safely" do a lot of things,
including using custom nitrox mixes, without having a little card that
says they can.  I wouldn't be as concerned about the absolute safety as
much as the dive shops' liability concerns... Any shop that provides
anything other than air, NNI, or NNII to divers with basic nitrox cards
is opening the door to liability problems -- whether or not it's common
practice or "OK because they know me," it's outside what the certification
covers.  Technical nitrox is a pretty big step away from basic, and there
are plenty of people who don't want to go that far just to be able to
use an optimal nitrox mix for a particular dive.

It seems like there's a lot of room for all three.  Basic for the diver
who doesn't want to do the math every time they go diving, and is happy
using the NOAA tables; advanced for the diver who's still doing mainly
no-deco dives, but can handle figuring EADs and MODs and PO2s; and
technical for the diver who is doing more advanced technical diving, with
multi-stage decompression, gas switches, etc.  As long as IANTD doesn't
get unreasonable with the pre-requisites (like requiring basic nitrox
before advanced, even though most of the info is the same), I think
these particular options are nice to have.

--tab

-- 
        Tracey Baker              tab@pa*.co*
  "I don't think safety is the main issue here...
                          You'd be stupid not to be safe."

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