Scuba Lawyer
Contributor
I went from a single steel 72 to Aluminum Twin 50's in 1976. I loved the extra air, especially for long shallow beach dives, plus they balanced just right on me. When I use short doubles these days they are either my steel 38's or 45's. Back in the day I tried twin steel 72's a few times but they never felt right, hard to swim with, were too heavy, hurt my back and I never needed that much air. I did use back-mount dual 80's cave diving for 20 years but for some reason they felt fine (modern back-plate maybe and not the blow-molded Cam-packs we used to use). Here is a photo a friend took of me in 1977 with my old twin 50's (yes the 'bad' alloy). Please note that I was properly protecting my snorkel in my mouth during my entrance and wholly disregarding where the 2nd stage of my Calypso IV was. Who knows what I was thinking at the time - back then I would assume my air was on until proven otherwise a few feet down. These days I'm a tad more cautious on the pre-dive planning aspect of things. M