Advice on first BP/W

[Evan Soon]

Sorry to barge in on the thread.

I normally use about 6lbs of weights in total without wetsuit for jacket style bcd and half a year ago when I tried my friend's DiveRite bp/w i didn't need any weights and was having about 1 pump of air in the wings. Now I have started to go to the gym and from OW we know that muscle mass would make you more -ve (although I doubt there has been a very big change), I am worried that getting the stainless steel bp would be too heavy. Should I go for the aluminium and add weights if needed?

Planning to order it from overseas(for me) so if things goes wrong it would be very troublesome. Thanks in advance

 

[cool_hardware52]

Sorry to barge in on the thread.

I normally use about 6lbs of weights in total without wetsuit for jacket style bcd and half a year ago when I tried my friend's DiveRite bp/w i didn't need any weights and was having about 1 pump of air in the wings. Now I have started to go to the gym and from OW we know that muscle mass would make you more -ve (although I doubt there has been a very big change), I am worried that getting the stainless steel bp would be too heavy. Should I go for the aluminium and add weights if needed?

Planning to order it from overseas(for me) so if things goes wrong it would be very troublesome. Thanks in advance

Determine if *you* are neutral or close to it in your swim suit.

Determine how buoyant your exposure suit is.

Look up how buoyant (or negative) your cylinder will be when empty.

Now you have the tools to determine how much ballast you need to go diving. Your choice of back plate is part of that ballast.

Tobin

 

[halocline]

Sorry to barge in on the thread.

I normally use about 6lbs of weights in total without wetsuit for jacket style bcd and half a year ago when I tried my friend's DiveRite bp/w i didn't need any weights and was having about 1 pump of air in the wings.... I am worried that getting the stainless steel bp would be too heavy. Should I go for the aluminium and add weights if needed?

Sounds like you're right on the edge, the safest bet is an AL backplate. You can put weights on the cambands and approximate the weight distribution of a steel plate; it's not as good IMO, but pretty close. XS scuba makes nice little camband pockets for this.

This assumes you typically dive with no wetsuit and the same type of tank you mentioned when you said 6 lbs w/ a jacket BC. If that's an AL tank, and you switch to a steel tank, you'll be quite overweighted with the steel plate, unless you then put on a buoyant wetsuit, etc...

There are lots of variables. If you really only want to order once and you think you might be using different tanks and/or exposure suits, bite the bullet and get both a steel and AL plate, two standard webbing harness kits (they're cheap) and one wing. The wing is the expensive part.

 

[Evan Soon]

Sounds like you're right on the edge, the safest bet is an AL backplate. You can put weights on the cambands and approximate the weight distribution of a steel plate; it's not as good IMO, but pretty close. XS scuba makes nice little camband pockets for this.

This assumes you typically dive with no wetsuit and the same type of tank you mentioned when you said 6 lbs w/ a jacket BC. If that's an AL tank, and you switch to a steel tank, you'll be quite overweighted with the steel plate, unless you then put on a buoyant wetsuit, etc...

There are lots of variables. If you really only want to order once and you think you might be using different tanks and/or exposure suits, bite the bullet and get both a steel and AL plate, two standard webbing harness kits (they're cheap) and one wing. The wing is the expensive part.

I normally dive with AL tanks and being in Malaysia I dive tropical waters all year round so at most its a 5mm wetsuit and that is once in a blue moon. It seems that although the plate is about 6 lbs, I can't compare it with wearing 6 lbs of weight with jacket style bcd. Is that correct to say?

Tobin,

Thanks. Will try to search for how much ballast I need. But would you say it would be better to go less than more so that you would be able to adjust the weightings?

 

[halocline]

I normally dive with AL tanks and being in Malaysia I dive tropical waters all year round so at most its a 5mm wetsuit and that is once in a blue moon. It seems that although the plate is about 6 lbs, I can't compare it with wearing 6 lbs of weight with jacket style bcd. Is that correct to say?

Most jacket BCs are at least a couple of pounds positive due to the useless padding and associated plastic crap found on many of them. So, when you switch to a steel plate (6lbs neg) with webbing harness (neutral), wing (maybe very slightly positive), and metal hardware (slightly negative) many divers find they can drop 8lbs or more from what they use with a jacket BC. This is mostly dependent on the amount of positive buoyancy in your jacket BC.

 

[DanMont]

Well just ordered all the components and am eagerly looking forward to them arriving sometime next week. Got a SS back plate from Red Hat Diving (a small UK company), Voyager exp wing and basic harness from diverite (cheapest I could find from a shop in Europe) and a scubapro crotch strap (found in a sale at 60% off!). Can't wait to get it in the pool for the first time!

 

[cool_hardware52]

I normally dive with AL tanks and being in Malaysia I dive tropical waters all year round so at most its a 5mm wetsuit and that is once in a blue moon. It seems that although the plate is about 6 lbs, I can't compare it with wearing 6 lbs of weight with jacket style bcd. Is that correct to say?

Tobin,

Thanks. Will try to search for how much ballast I need. But would you say it would be better to go less than more so that you would be able to adjust the weightings?

For tropical diving if you can get close (within ~ 1 lbs) of the ballast you need with just gear, meaning your plate, harness and regulator for ballast it's usually not a problem. Trimming out a light single rig that includes a buoyant tank (al 80's) seldom requires huge amounts of ballast be repositioned. The benefit of such an approach is simplicity.

As an aside, unless you are quite negative in your swim trunks I'd be surprised if a 5mm suit + al 80 doesn't make a SS plate a better choice, but don't rely on my educated guess, test your gear.

Tobin