Sidemount and "tec" training...
- Thread starter Patoux01
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I have to agree with you to some extent. Each configuration really has its pros/cons,but because sidemount presently is gripped by a commercial frenzy,the pros tend to show up more. Nitrox in the mid90s was considered voo doo and banned from DEMA. But, the dive industry is always looking for a way to get already certified,entrenched divers to open their wallets to buy more gear,and get certifications, saw nitrox as that means. All of a sudden you heard how great nitrox was, it would give you longer bottom times,make you feel better etc etc. This heavy marketing worked and you saw an explosion of certifications,and gear. Where rebreathers are too expensive to do the same thing,sidemount isn't,so we have a lot of new gear and instructors standing in line to certify you. Where I am going with this is that sidemount is not the swiss army knife of diving and has its limitations which will always be inherent in the system. Eventually when this hits a marketing peak because there is saturation of the market, we will be in a better position to use critical thinking on the systems,and determine what is the best.
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... and here we are 25 years later and nitrox is pretty much universally available and widely used ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Yep you are right, it is mainstream,and for that sake it was being used for many years before the mid90s,we were just making it ourselves. Samething with sidemount,it has been around for a long time,and even have my first homemade sidemount harness. The key point to what I was saying is that the plus and minus of nitrox are still there,you just don't have the strong marketing that focus on the plusses like you used to. Sidemount has strong marketing,and you see consumer rationalization,but the same plus/minus still exist from the 80s. I would add a counter is now that we are less individually manufacturing with more commercial manufacturing, we will have a tendency to see less innovation. Hence where everybody made their harness and you had a lot of individual experimentation and constant group evolution,now you have company ABC and using XYZ mods,so now less innovation is occurring in the process.
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All true, but the same thing happened with the BP/W ... isn't your explanation the reason why Halcyon was created? BP/W existed for years before anyone offered them commercially.
But it's the market usually determines the success or failure of innovation ... companies create products that are in demand, not the other way around. In the case of sidemount, I think one of the driving forces behind its movement to open water is a population of divers who find it easier to move equipment from the parking lot to the water in individual pieces, rather than as a unit. That, at least, is what I hear most commonly from the local divers who approach me on the topic. And I'd be more OK about that if there were a reasonable number of qualified instructors to teach it properly. What we have instead is a growing number of instructors who are barely qualified to dive sidemount trying to teach it in an environment it wasn't really designed for. In such cases, the risks and contingencies I mentioned earlier aren't usually taught ... because the people doing the teaching don't really understand them. And you can't teach what you don't understand. This is, to my concern, the biggest real-world drawback of the sidemount configuration ... as it applies to the growing number of people who want to use it for open water diving ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
But it's the market usually determines the success or failure of innovation ... companies create products that are in demand, not the other way around. In the case of sidemount, I think one of the driving forces behind its movement to open water is a population of divers who find it easier to move equipment from the parking lot to the water in individual pieces, rather than as a unit. That, at least, is what I hear most commonly from the local divers who approach me on the topic. And I'd be more OK about that if there were a reasonable number of qualified instructors to teach it properly. What we have instead is a growing number of instructors who are barely qualified to dive sidemount trying to teach it in an environment it wasn't really designed for. In such cases, the risks and contingencies I mentioned earlier aren't usually taught ... because the people doing the teaching don't really understand them. And you can't teach what you don't understand. This is, to my concern, the biggest real-world drawback of the sidemount configuration ... as it applies to the growing number of people who want to use it for open water diving ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Sidemount is synonymous with innovation. There is no part on my 3 rigs that has not been modified and tweaked. I've made my own plates because I could do it better. I've tried all sorts of bungee systems. I've changed out the wings and inflators. They all suit a different purpose. And I'm not the most innovative in my group. Commercially made or not, they all get modified.
Doesn't everybody have aspirations? And inspirations?
Unless I'm teaching OW students, I do all of my diving in sidemount. Why? Because I want to be very good at it. I love diving the caves in Mexico. There are sidemount only caves that have no mount restrictions. But I only get the chance to travel there once or twice a year. The rest of the time I'm diving cold water, low viz, relatively shallow lakes. Do I need to dive sidemount in that environment? No. But I choose to because every dive I do in sidemount is another dive closer to being proficient in it.
The students I teach don't need to be in sidemount, but they want to be. There's some advanced dive that they yearn for. Something that's driving them to get more training. Could be a deep dive, could be a wreck dive. Good for them!!! I've inspired a few of them to start cave diving. Makes my trips to Mexico a lot more fun.
I view sidemount diving like I view my 4x4 truck. Do I need it all the time? No. But does that mean I need to buy another vehicle to drive around in the mean time? I don't need the 4x4 in the summer, but I sure appreciate it when it dumps 25cm of snow in a day in the winter. Do I need all the space in the back 90% of the time I drive it? No. But I appreciate it when I'm hauling tanks and gear out for dives.
If the OP chooses to dive sidemount, then he should get his training in sidemount. "Train how you're going to fight" I believe is the term. And I also believe that anyone diving in sidemount SHOULD also be diving it in open water. Isn't that proper Tec protocol? Test and become proficient with any gear in the pool or shallow open water before proceeding to a more challenging environment?
Patoux, since it's the Stealth you have, I would say try to get in with Steve Martin. The guys he dives with in Mexico are associated with the people that designed the Stealth and that are using it to its extreme limits. They know what works and doesn't work. Mauro Bordignon (aka the Honeybadger) is probably the most active cave explorer out there now. They laid 15,000 feet of line in a new cave since I left last week. Trust me...that involved a stage or two. No offence, but after watching Andy's videos over the years, I'm not sure he would be the best avenue for you.
Unless I'm teaching OW students, I do all of my diving in sidemount. Why? Because I want to be very good at it. I love diving the caves in Mexico. There are sidemount only caves that have no mount restrictions. But I only get the chance to travel there once or twice a year. The rest of the time I'm diving cold water, low viz, relatively shallow lakes. Do I need to dive sidemount in that environment? No. But I choose to because every dive I do in sidemount is another dive closer to being proficient in it.
The students I teach don't need to be in sidemount, but they want to be. There's some advanced dive that they yearn for. Something that's driving them to get more training. Could be a deep dive, could be a wreck dive. Good for them!!! I've inspired a few of them to start cave diving. Makes my trips to Mexico a lot more fun.
I view sidemount diving like I view my 4x4 truck. Do I need it all the time? No. But does that mean I need to buy another vehicle to drive around in the mean time? I don't need the 4x4 in the summer, but I sure appreciate it when it dumps 25cm of snow in a day in the winter. Do I need all the space in the back 90% of the time I drive it? No. But I appreciate it when I'm hauling tanks and gear out for dives.
If the OP chooses to dive sidemount, then he should get his training in sidemount. "Train how you're going to fight" I believe is the term. And I also believe that anyone diving in sidemount SHOULD also be diving it in open water. Isn't that proper Tec protocol? Test and become proficient with any gear in the pool or shallow open water before proceeding to a more challenging environment?
Patoux, since it's the Stealth you have, I would say try to get in with Steve Martin. The guys he dives with in Mexico are associated with the people that designed the Stealth and that are using it to its extreme limits. They know what works and doesn't work. Mauro Bordignon (aka the Honeybadger) is probably the most active cave explorer out there now. They laid 15,000 feet of line in a new cave since I left last week. Trust me...that involved a stage or two. No offence, but after watching Andy's videos over the years, I'm not sure he would be the best avenue for you.
I don't see it as a very big deal either actually. When people ask me why I dive in a different way using such a strange setup, my answer is "how is it different from what you have on your back? There's a tank, 2 regs and a spg, I'd let you carry your tank in your arms if you wanted to, as long as it stays with you I'm fine". That is for easy 1 tank dives (which all of my dives are atm).
Now with 2 tanks, that's where you have to learn procedures that relate to your gear setup. Valve shutdown, knowing which one to close, how to do air-share etc etc.
Some people say this should be in a sidemount essentials course, I believe it would very well find place in the intro to tec course. For the obvious reason that when someone in BM comes to intro to tec, he's expected to having done only single tank dives, why should that be different for someone coming from SM?
Now when we add stages, those are mounted slightly differently in SM than in BM, someone diving with stages at 90° in SM will be laughed at. Procedures may or may not be the same, I don't know that, I assume they are because I can't see why they should be different.
For that whole gas loss dilemma, I really don't get it. Suppose you would (which most of us seem to say you can't, but let's not diverge on the fact that it could be possible) be able to indeed lose half your gas. Doesn't that simply become part of gas planning? Rather than "oh my, now I won't have enough to get my ass out of here", it seems very wrong to me to go to a point where you could indeed be able to not make it out with enough gas. When that happens in BM, it's called "poor planning", why should it be called "****ty configuration" when it's sidemount? Then it won't get you as far as BM in a cave (except the guy in BM won't be able to pass the first restriction), but does that mean it's no good?
To be honest, I've bought the stealth because of the tons of pictures you can see of Santiago Pintado, Steve Martin etc, and knowing that it's safer for solo diving (which will eventually happen later on), because whatever the **** you do, you can't lose all your gas, and those dives would be dives that always allow for an ascent in less than 50bar on a single tank. I had considered a bpw setup, almost bought one when I saw SM, so here I am now. Since those guys are able to dive to 80+ without any problem in SM it never even crossed my mind that I'd be told off by instructors because "SM is no good when you carry a stage", I did know however that some instructors were very close-minded about sidemount, but those were supposed to be mainly "noobs" or hardcore DIR divers. Since to me DIR doesn't me technical and technical doesn't mean DIR, I didn't expect it to be impossible to find an instructor for "basic" tec courses that would let me dive "the way I want".
Anyway, I think in the end I'll just wait until I get a chance to see a SM instructor to do those courses, and keep training on my own in the meantime. Maybe next year, maybe even later...
You obviously don't do long shallow dives where there's surf or surge (for instance). SM sucks for that. Backmounted doubles are slightly better if there's a sandy entry. If its a rocky entry, a large single backmounted is really the only safe approach. Its only worse if you have a scooter to carry too.
I'm sure you have plenty of rationalizations why SM is awesome everywhere, you always do, but that doesn't make them true.
Did you try it?
Because I don't have too much of a problem with it, in any case not more than my backmounted buddies.
Edit: Let me edit that, what I mean is I don't have a problem of a tank swinging everywhere. The problems I'm facing are due to me being clumsy and having discovered the ocean less than 4 months ago.
Because I don't have too much of a problem with it, in any case not more than my backmounted buddies.
Edit: Let me edit that, what I mean is I don't have a problem of a tank swinging everywhere. The problems I'm facing are due to me being clumsy and having discovered the ocean less than 4 months ago.
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