Since it's been 5 years with exactly zero activity in this subforum I am adding the following picture of me in a kiss sidewinder. Sidemount trimix CCR in cold water is a ton of crap, including that dangly QC6 that I need to stow....
5 years!
- Thread starter rjack321
- Start date
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PfcAJ
Contributor
doin RB80 stuff
OP
you make a lonely dangly QC6 look so trivial 
Damn rjack, keep that strokey dangly crap back in the rec forums. Get güd.....
I’m still undecided on the whole sidewinder thing. It intrigues me a little bit.
I’m still undecided on the whole sidewinder thing. It intrigues me a little bit.
I just moved from a Meg to a sidewinder. The main reason is that the sidewinder suites my diving more - which is mostly cave tourist and some exploration. I’ve also got a bad taste in my mouth for electronics issues from the meg15 head, so I was happy to move to a fully mechanical unit.
The sidewinder has a side benefit of being almost as easy to dive as open circuit, buoyancy wise. This is mainly due to the total loop volume being smaller than your topical backmounted unit. It likely is also a bit of getting immediate feedback of the counter lung volume due to it being sandwiched between your back and your side mount harness.
OP
The sidewinder is easy breezy to dive with bare hands and no suit gas or suit heater or canister heater. It was a snap to get clean in FL. Sadly everything I learned from Edd had to get redone up here. I have 3! more attachments (suit heater can, suit gas, scrubber heater canister). And I couldn't actuate the dil MAV on-off in the place Edd rigs his (basically right armpit). I had to reroute the whole MAV over the shoulder. So its a whole redo for cold water :/ For boat diving, wrecks etc its definitely not a great unit at all. To gear up, adjust, and check everything properly I pretty much have to be at a beach in shallow water. Which isn't a big shock considering that the whole unit was tweeked and "made" at the Jackson Blue Spring beach.
As James says, the counterlung being on the small of your back is genius. Buoyancy control and min loop volume is just magically intuitive.
OP
Still getting used to the needle valve I added. I did a couple of ppO2 spikes intentionally at the beginning (1.45-1.5 ish). Having a cool (ppO2 wise) dil doesn't help for fO2 stability, you can see when I needed volume which I kind of over-added at min 53. There was some screwing around going on at that very un-strategic time lol. Loop contents on the sidewinder actually take about 3 breaths to stabilize for me.
Don't hate unless you post your own profiles so I can hate back This was a bit of a working dive connecting 6 wrecks on a ~2,100ft line. ~8-10ft vis, 44F water.
This was a bit of a working dive connecting 6 wrecks on a ~2,100ft line. ~8-10ft vis, 44F water.Similar threads
