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I don't have much to add regarding the SMS 75, other than the KISS Sidewinder CCR was designed to be used with the SMS 75 - it works with other BCs, some with and others without some mods, but it was designed around the SMS 75. ----- In general, side mount rigs break down into two categories...

To be fair the dates of the pots are not all that prominent and new members are faced with a catch 22. If they use the search function they create zombie threads and get criticized. If they do not use the search function and ask a question that's been asked before, they get criticized for not...

You can do a lost line drill in any body of water that offers the right topography. I used to dive in mountain lakes and reservoirs where there would be rock walls that in effect give you a half cave to work with. Most quarries offer similar areas. Lay a line, have your buddy take you off the...

Until I saw the rEvo comment, I was going to suggest sidemount as it is easier on the back and properly done does not require any arching to maintain trim. It is more comfortable and I have no issues on 5-6 hour dives in sidemount with a Sidekick. If you can't figure something else out you...

rddvet hit it more or less on the nose, but I'll add a bit more. In order to have a degree of redundancy you have to have an isolator on the manifold - one of the things AG added when it went from an alternative to single tank monkey diving to an alternative for technical diving. As noted...

Pre requisites vary but 100 OW dives is a good minimum to shoot for before starting cave training. That said, TDI only requires 25 dives to start Cavern class. The thing to remember is that you are paying for training. You won't get a card unless you earn it. The in water portion of a Cavern...

Ask a half dozen cave divers a question and you'll get 8 different opinions. Add in side mount and the number of opinions increases to about 12. Everybody has a favorite position but I'll try to be balanced and unbiased ----- I dove back mount doubles in great lakes and mid Atlantic wreck...

,We also use the two finger switch signal, but we contextualize it by pointing at a second stage. ---- I've never seen any use the wave the thumb and pinky "shaka" or "hang loose" signal for deco. Instead we just use the raised pinky finger. However.... I tuck the remaining fingers AND the...

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Manifolds get bent when a set of doubles gets dropped. Even though it's not moving all that fast, even one half of a set of doubles has a lot of kinetic energy, and when the tank that hits first stops the other will keep right on going. The harder the...

Quality is what matters. At one extreme, I've prepped side mount divers who were able to start and then rock cave training in side mount after just a half dozen side mount dives prior to class. Another 50 full cave dives and they'd be ready to consider switching to a side mount CCR. However...

Overall I'm in near total agreement with Richard that a Side mount CCR is not what you want. Not now. Maybe not ever. It's not ideal for offshore. I can make a side mount CCR work in that role, but it's not ideal, and we do very few deep offshore dives anyway. If it was my primary interest...

I agree that SM CCR is great for small passage caves and for caves where you are only a couple thousand feet from an entrance or have the ability to make a couple set up dives to pre-place most of your bailout. I agree that it is also not ideal for deep offshore dives, however you can make it...

Marci and I both have LX 20 hand helds. I wasn't really a fan until I saw hers in the water, both in terms of brightness and run time. Dive Right advertises 4 hours on high and 6 hours on medium, but we've both gotten 5.5 hours out of them on high (20,000 lux). If we are planning a 6 hour...

Friends don't let friends dive ring bungees. In my experience there are a couple problems with ring bungees. 1) Bungee is by necessity short and has limited ability to pull the tank up where it needs to be. 2) The bolt snap and quick link used to connect the ring to the shoulder D-ring also...

That's true enough if the diver left it stock. However it was (and still is) easy to rig an SMS 50 for a continuous loop bungee or a pair of loop bungees. And while it has a tail plate with rails, it's a small tail plate that can be ignored. There is indeed no spine length adjustment, but...

I'm missing the logic behind doing an O2 flush between 20 and 30 ft. 20 ft is essential because it's the known pressure and expected PP02 of 1.6 that you're testing the cell against with the O2 flush. The problem with accepting a reading of 1.6 at greater than 20.5' as proof the cell isn't...

I'm not sure how the ADV is adjusted on the Sidewinder, but on the Sidekick it is pretty easy to just move the ADV paddle a little farther down the stem until you reach the sweet spot where it will fire without having to inhale too hard, and yet not be super sensitive. One advantage of the...

I wrote the above as being separate from a pre-dive check of the mushroom valves - which should be a given, but I agree that having a mushroom valve get folded open or stuck open with foreign matter is a risk. It's also a risk you can minimize by taking care to avoid any foreign matter in the...

It's not all upside. As it is now, prudent CCR divers put a great deal of effort into preventing breakthrough by: - buying quality sorb; - keeping it properly stored; - using it by it's expiration date; - doing a very thorough and carful job packing the scrubber in order to prevent channeling...

I've noticed when checking cells in a pressure pot that the percentage of error increases the farther I get away from the 1.0 calibration point. The problem with running a set point higher than 1.2 or 1.3 is that with cells that have been in use a while, and have some moisture on the cell...