What do you love and what do you hate about your unit?

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I. But being a sidemount CCR with a near cult following and heavily promoted bugs me. The winder definitely has some negatives.
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Funny enough, I think this thread is one of the first times I've really heard any of the negatives of the sidewinder. I know when it first came out alot of people called it a POS because it had no flood tolerance. Then those people became rabid sidewinder fans (several of which are instructors who obviously have a vested interest in it's success). I do wish I had heard more about the negatives prior to my crossover. Now that I took the crossover I've told a couple of people(sidewinder divers) that I greatly respect about my issues with the unit and I get the "yeah I guess I could've told you that" responses. I think alot of people are nervous to be open about the negatives to avoid any retaliation or arguments with the rabid horde.

The recent stories of peoples' loop hoses popping off the towers was a hot topic of discussion in the class and was met with "they just don't know how to dive it" responses from both instructors. I've heard of at least 5 people having the issue, one of which is a big name instructor from a group who's name you all know and would definitely not be the type to be banging the towers through the cave.
 
Funny enough, I think this thread is one of the first times I've really heard any of the negatives of the sidewinder. I know when it first came out alot of people called it a POS because it had no flood tolerance. Then those people became rabid sidewinder fans (several of which are instructors who obviously have a vested interest in it's success). I do wish I had heard more about the negatives prior to my crossover. Now that I took the crossover I've told a couple of people(sidewinder divers) that I greatly respect about my issues with the unit and I get the "yeah I guess I could've told you that" responses. I think alot of people are nervous to be open about the negatives to avoid any retaliation or arguments with the rabid horde.

The recent stories of peoples' loop hoses popping off the towers was a hot topic of discussion in the class and was met with "they just don't know how to dive it" responses from both instructors. I've heard of at least 5 people having the issue, one of which is a big name instructor from a group who's name you all know and would definitely not be the type to be banging the towers through the cave.
Having some spent some time with the people he feels "don't know how to dive it" and had the rolled off towers in my hand, I've disagreed wit him on that. I'm pretty thrilled to have moved over to the LM towers from their initial run. Pricy but I'm less sketched out.
 
Funny enough, I think this thread is one of the first times I've really heard any of the negatives of the sidewinder. I know when it first came out alot of people called it a POS because it had no flood tolerance. Then those people became rabid sidewinder fans (several of which are instructors who obviously have a vested interest in it's success). I do wish I had heard more about the negatives prior to my crossover. Now that I took the crossover I've told a couple of people(sidewinder divers) that I greatly respect about my issues with the unit and I get the "yeah I guess I could've told you that" responses. I think alot of people are nervous to be open about the negatives to avoid any retaliation or arguments with the rabid horde.

The recent stories of peoples' loop hoses popping off the towers was a hot topic of discussion in the class and was met with "they just don't know how to dive it" responses from both instructors. I've heard of at least 5 people having the issue, one of which is a big name instructor from a group who's name you all know and would definitely not be the type to be banging the towers through the cave.
I've always recognized that the flood tolerance is near zero.
Other than the boat issues with SM/dil/prebreathing, my other big issue is the scrubber durations. Having zero testing while one of the big promoters claims that soggy wet sorb is just as effective as any other scrubber is just bogus.

The scrubber heaters are actually pretty groundbreaking - I had to do my own testing on those to try and understand how big of an impact they have. I think its pretty significant for <6C waters but that's just based on the testing I did with a thermometer in my refrigerator and how warm the sorb got with 110wh dumped into it over an hour (static not even breathing them). Plus my anecdotal experience of using less suit heat when I use the scrubber heaters. But they are brutal on the batteries, and more of a gimmick solution for cold water performance which just happens to suit much of my diving. Not a substitute for good scrubber design and testing.

Having some spent some time with the people he feels "don't know how to dive it" and had the rolled off towers in my hand, I've disagreed wit him on that. I'm pretty thrilled to have moved over to the LM towers from their initial run. Pricy but I'm less sketched out.

I have never experienced anything like this. I saw the LM upgrades yet I can't even figure out how to unscrew the towers from my heads? I would splurge for the upgrades if I could understand the issue more. Help me out here, how are the towers getting loose and which connection is the problem? The locking ring?
 
I've always recognized that the flood tolerance is near zero.
Other than the boat issues with SM/dil/prebreathing, my other big issue is the scrubber durations. Having zero testing while one of the big promoters claims that soggy wet sorb is just as effective as any other scrubber is just bogus.

I have never experienced anything like this. I saw the LM upgrades yet I can't even figure out how to unscrew the towers from my heads? I would splurge for the upgrades if I could understand the issue more. Help me out here, how are the towers getting loose and which connection is the problem? The locking ring?

I definitely remember your comments about flood tolerance. You're actually one of the few that's talked about it.
I must've heard 5 times a day that "wet sorb is 90% as effective as dry sorb." Both the other student and I were very bothered by how both scrubbers had wet spots in the sorb even after fairly short dives.

I don't know exactly what's leading to the hoses popping off, but I know of 5 people directly. A good instructor friend knows of 9 instances. I personally don't like the design of the tower attachments at all and susect people aren't actually seating them properly leading to them popping off. Edd kept saying they didn't know how to mount the unit to their harness and it led to them scraping them on the cave. I'm putting my money on design. Had I bought the unit I was going to upgrade to the LM ones just for my own peace of mind
 
I have a JJ.

Pros:

Made of metal mostly and so tough wrt divers handling it.
Very simple.
All just works.
Reliable. I have had three failures in 5 years - two of those were Shearwater bits, one was the ADV cutoff.

Cons:

Heavy for travel.
Heavy in a wetsuit.
When you take the head off to dry out there is no good way to put it down to avoid getting o rings covered in muck.
Not very satisfactory assembling it without sorb.
HUD holder could be better.

Basically it is brilliant.
 
I'm two weeks from Mod1 in my JJ, Rona permitting. What did you mean:
Not very satisfactory assembling it without sorb.
?
 
Yeah, that's what I suspected. I figure I'll give it a try anyways. I've been mounting my inflation bottle on the backplate like regular doubles but I had to move it down to a lower rung on the backplate so it wouldn't restrict the counterlungs. I may try piggybacking a larger one at some point in the future.

it calmed the demons in my head by being symmetrical... That in and of itself was worth it.
 
For those diving the Fathom, how do you feel about the Kent tooling cylinder mounts?
 
For those diving the Fathom, how do you feel about the Kent tooling cylinder mounts?

exceptionally solid. I actually have 9 pairs of them for my wife and I. 2 sets each for 3L tanks, 1 set each for al30s, One set each for travel, and one set for me for lp50s. The only issue we had is one of my wife’s tank side attachments won’t slide into my rebreather side attachments without seizing up. I still can figure out what catches. Other than that one issue we haven’t had problems. And it is only an issue if I put her one tank on my unit. It works fine on hers. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to remove a tank. You’ve got to get the right angle for the lock to pull, but it’s really not an issue. I would much rather have a rock solid attachment that sometimes is a little hard to remove than some of the flimsy attachments I see on unit’s like soft cambands. Kent tooling even offered to replace that one tank side attachment. But I just don’t use her tank and it’s a nonissue
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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