- Messages
- 5,884
- Reaction score
- 2,998
- Location
- Lake Worth, Florida, United States
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
I also remember using just the plastic backpak harness for my steel 72 tanks, with no BC into the mid 80's...the ONLY reason I added a BC in the mid-80's, was that most of the dive boats were getting pissy about having divers on the boat with no BC--apparently the ugliness of attorneys and liabilities was beginning to have an effect on boat policies--kind of the end of the time in America when we as a nation were ethical enough to take responsibility for ourselves--and not have to blame our own mishaps on someone else...
I hated the horse collars-=--would always refuse to wear them....I then hated the early stab jackets, but ended up forced to wear them if I wanted to go on a public charter..they were sloppy and high drag, and since I would normally dive in a lycra skin, I had no need of a BC.... The adage I learned in the 70's, was "Anyone that needs a BC deserves to drown"....and that was a perspective with some truth to it....it should not be a crutch that a diver "Needs" to be safe on a dive....at least not in warm tropical waters where you don't have to compensate for wetsuit bouyancy changes.
Around 1990, Frank Hammet got me an Atpac I used for several years, until it had the inflator hose break off at the place it goes into the wing, on a 145 foot deep dive I was heavily weight for ( due to huge current and desired fast drop)....this was a hard swim to the surface, and I liked the atpac system a lot less from then on The Stab jackets and weightbelt seemed the best compromise after the at pac....and the moment Robert Carmichael let me try the 18 pound lift Halcyon wing, with harness and back plate system--around 1997, I was DONE permanently with jacket bc's, and found the Halcyon to be "almost" as nice as the steel 72 in plastic backpac harness with no BC....which would still be desirable to me today far above any scubapro, mares, or any other jacket style BC.
The 72 was an awesome tank--the buoyancy was perfect for ocean diving...you just did not need the nonsense of a bc. I have no doubt, the dive industry decided they needed to abandon the 72's, so that tank swings would be much larger and would force divers to NEED a BC...that and the highly buoyant wet suits and all their swing with depth changes.
I hated the horse collars-=--would always refuse to wear them....I then hated the early stab jackets, but ended up forced to wear them if I wanted to go on a public charter..they were sloppy and high drag, and since I would normally dive in a lycra skin, I had no need of a BC.... The adage I learned in the 70's, was "Anyone that needs a BC deserves to drown"....and that was a perspective with some truth to it....it should not be a crutch that a diver "Needs" to be safe on a dive....at least not in warm tropical waters where you don't have to compensate for wetsuit bouyancy changes.
Around 1990, Frank Hammet got me an Atpac I used for several years, until it had the inflator hose break off at the place it goes into the wing, on a 145 foot deep dive I was heavily weight for ( due to huge current and desired fast drop)....this was a hard swim to the surface, and I liked the atpac system a lot less from then on The Stab jackets and weightbelt seemed the best compromise after the at pac....and the moment Robert Carmichael let me try the 18 pound lift Halcyon wing, with harness and back plate system--around 1997, I was DONE permanently with jacket bc's, and found the Halcyon to be "almost" as nice as the steel 72 in plastic backpac harness with no BC....which would still be desirable to me today far above any scubapro, mares, or any other jacket style BC.
The 72 was an awesome tank--the buoyancy was perfect for ocean diving...you just did not need the nonsense of a bc. I have no doubt, the dive industry decided they needed to abandon the 72's, so that tank swings would be much larger and would force divers to NEED a BC...that and the highly buoyant wet suits and all their swing with depth changes.