Eric,
I think divers are not taught to think high enough in their weighting, and available equipment encourages this -- I'm mildly focused on it and lose sight of the options. They just know weight belt, or the newer thing integrated, or, if they want to get advanced, there's mid back trim pockets. Talking normal rec. diver training here.
We need more visibility of good, slim, shoulder pocket options, no threading required; and common availability of 1 lb. weights for them.
By being where the weight is likely needed, BC mid-back trim pockets and BP/W plates tend the diver to out of trim if all the remaining weight is in the common, lower, ditch locations, waist integrated and weight belt. And to no-ditch if they leave nothing below....
BP/W are great for many reasons, and I would not see diving anything else. But extolling their trim benefits might skip over the staying ditchable as just one too many things to introduce at once. 'BP/W give great modularity, but you still want that weight belt, or $80+ integrated, and if you don't already some shoulder pockets, $20+, for trim while staying ditchable, and for tropics that leaves the plate being just 2 lb. of your ballast...., and you'll need the dive op to have lots of small weights"
To stay ditchable and in easy trim, some of the non-mid back weight needs to be higher. Shoulder or very top of BC pockets give the most bang for that weight. And no-thread shoulder strap pockets have an advantage of working with any BC. But modest of size to not interfere, no weight loosing holes, U.S. availability, and not very expensive would be good.
XSScuba has cheap non-thread pockets, but they are big 5 lb. ones, and not super secure, I started with them. DGX has nice cheap small no-holes trim pockets, but they need threading, which might not work with jackets, I use these now. RainPilot pointed out some nice non-threaded that seem very good, but not so cheap, and when I had looked in the past they were non U.S. distributers (not that all divers are U.S...).
When I've done guided boat dives, 2 lb. weights were in slim supply much less 1 lb. I'm unclear on why... the common price is by pound not piece.... So being stuck with 4 lb. to the shoulders is a big commitment, if you only needed 2 lb. I flew my own collection of 1 lb. weights with me..., not something we can expect of most divers. Even then, when I asked for four 2 lb. weights, for integrated and belt, they were hoping two 4 lb. might work. If you're equipping lots of random divers, why would you have mostly big weights? Those divers being anything but vertical when still was not at all an expectation. Over my two deep Belize dives, they were all vertical and kicking at each safety stop. My Hawaii dives I was last up so didn't see the other divers' stationary behavior as much.
(end rant...)
And Eric, I *applaud* your creating an AL Freedom plate version, for this very 'steel plate is usually just fine for the tropics', NOT, reason. There are recent threads of a Hawaii diver with 2 lb. whose location they could choose beyond their steel plate, and a tropics diver with 6 lb. total lead with AL 80 and small suit which would not leave much to play with if 4-5 lb. had been fixed to their BC back.
