#7880
Kemperite - 12/14/2008 9:03 AM


If you go back to your PADI Divemaster training you’ll find that a particular doctor was deeply involved in the research for the PADI RDP. DSAT is just a PADI company much like Mercury is a Ford company. SDI/TDI does not have their own dive table. They will sell you a copy of the Navy Dive Table but they strongly support (SDI Requires) the use of Dive Computers. IANTD has a slew of tables. IANTD paid for those tables to be cut specifically for them. Back before PADI started selling their own table and most Recreational Divers used Navy Tables you had to pay a research group to have your own tables cut. Essentially, each dive you made had a custom table if you called in to the research company to purchase it. Those tables were not to be resold. IANTD decided that they would purchase rights to a variety of tables (I believe they have 20 different tables in print at this moment in time for various mixes and deco models) and market them as soft tables. Their tables can be rolled up and are printed on a vinyl material. If you use the PADI Tables in any other class (I’m assuming this is the goal) then you are OK because so long as you pay the orginating agency for a table you may use it as you wish. Of course, you may not duplicate the table for distribution. To clarify, if you are a teaching an SDI Open Water course - where tables are not taught because you instead teach dive computers - you may add the PADI Dive Table to the curriculum and teach it to your students provided you sell them each a PADI Dive Table or you issue everyone an original PADI RDP for use during the class. Of course, if you teach them how to use a dive computer there is little need with your average Recreational Diver to teach them tables. Good dive computers have planning modes and work quite well for those Recreational needs.


Hope all is well and the holiday season is joyous - Greetings from Costa Rica,


Danny