All about Halcyon wings

[Dee]

Originally posted by SeaJay
Pull dumps on their inflator hoses? Do they have valves at the bottom for dumping while upside-down?

No, they do not have pull dumps on the inflator hose but there is a bottom dump valve.

I read something about Halycon supplying a "bungee" for keeping the power inflator tied down to the shoulder strap... That sounds pretty homemade, doesn't it?

Don't know about that but I use a very small retractor attached to my shoulder webbing.

I've never dived with anything but a standard BC, so back inflates and backplates are completely new to me.

Also, is it possible to get a backplate setup with integrated weights? I guess what I'm really asking is if I can get the weights off of ME and onto the rig, and still have a system where it's easy to dump weight in an emergency.

Yes, you can get integrated weights for a BP set-up. I use a couple of Dive Rite pockets but have yet to put any weight in them. With my FredT SS BP, that 6# is all I need for warm water diving. Halcyone makes integrated pockets, ACB (#15 @ pocket) and ACB+ (#10 @ pocket). I bought the ACB+ pockets but thought they were way too big, I didn't like the 'fit' of them. And since I don't need that much weight until this winter, they were overkill.

In PADI we're instructed that with no air in your BC and a full breath of air, you should float at eye level with the surface of the water.

Imagine my surprise when I found that I took a whopping six pounds off! Now I'm swimming with about 4 pounds...

Were you using a tank with less than 500psi? An Al80 tank is 5-6# positive when empty so if you weight yourself with that, you'll be fine as your tank gets low.

Lastly, while the feeling of "lightening up" was GREAT and made the experience sooo much better, I found that breathing now affected my boyancy more than ever. Also, I found out that I had a leaky inflator valve... After just a few minutes, I had to dump again to maintain boyancy. I can understand, too, that some people like more weight so that if they want to go fully negatively bouyant so that they STAY on the bottom, particularly useful in a stong current...

Still, I was floored to find that I was using just 4 lbs WITH a wetsuit. The BC was a standard jacket style, and other than a dive tool and a whistle and a min PCa dive light, I had no gear to speak of. I was diving with your standard run of the mill AL80. (Maybe I was using a steel 80?) Maintaining bouyancy was easy and a blast.

If just breathing evenly affected your bouyancy, you were a tad too lite. Or maybe it was the defective inflator. BTW, I'd make sure that got looked at! You might want to add 1-2# just for comfort.

I can tell in freshwater with a current I might want to go up to five or as much as seven pounds, max. Heck, I might even want to stay at 4 pounds... The feeling was wonderful and natural, and with a wetsuit, you become more negatively bouyant as you sink, right?

I don't know what this would translate to in salt water... Somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds, I believe.

Yes, you become more negative as you sink due to neoprene compression but you still have to weight yourself for the bouyancy of the suit...you have to break the surface and descend at some point! You'd probably add6-8# for salt water but best to do a weight check first if at all possible.

My point is this... I'm thinking about purchasing gear... Especially since I don't seem to need (or like) to swim with much weight, I'd like to go with weight integration. Seems like I'd get all the benefits without the disadvantages. And sometime in the next year or two I'd like to start with doubles. Does that mean I'd HAVE to go with a backplate at that time? If so, I might as well save myself the money and go with a BP now. But given the weight situation... Will a BP, even WITHOUT weights, be too heavy for me?

A BP/wing configuration is a truly custom fit. You really need someone who dives one to help you with the final fitting tweaks. Maddiver made a couple of suggestions to me about the position the the BP and the tightness of the webbing that made all the difference in the fit..and all that time I thought it was comfortable! There's really no reason a new diver can't use a BP/wing except, IMHO, you really need a true understanding of trim and bouyancy placement. This is where the help from an old salt comes in.

No, a BP without weights won't necessarily be too heavy for you. The Alum BP's are around 1# positive. FredT's stainless models weight #6 and #9 and these are used by folks using drysuits and needing lots of weight.

I'm sure others more experienced in BP/wing will have other ideas.

 

[SeaJay]

"No pull dump?"

Okay, I haven't even seen one of these, much less dived with one, so I can't comment.

But no pull dump?

On the first two dives that I went on, I used a BC with no pull dump. The first time I used a pull dump, I thought, "Now this is something that I must be sure to get when I get my BC."

I found that the pull dump had several advantages...

1. Typically, I'm diving from a boat. Almost always, there is a short 30 yard surface swim towards the anchor line, bouy, or whatever it is marking the site. While I've seen some divers use their air on the surface, I learned quickly to conserve my air for the dive. Some divers use a snorkel to get to the dive site... Which I would do, too, if I was diving a reef or something and it was all shallow enough to make use of a head-down swim. However, most of the time the surface is featureless, the vis low enough, or the water is deep enough to simply swim on my back, sans snorkel (which always seems to get in the way during the dive anyway.) But once I'd arrived at the site, it was real obvious who had pull dumps and who didn't... Those who didn't floated longer in this hand-up kind of position, holding that little button down, waiting for their BC to exhale. Those of us with pull dumps were simply GONE. In fact, we had to wait for our buddies to sink. I've found pull dumps to be much more effective in dumping air.

2. For this same reason, I've found the positioning of the pull dump to be ideal... It's high on the bladder where it should be to be most efficient at dumping ALL of the air out, especially helpful if you're planning on lighter weighting like I am. On the BC's that I've worn that don't have pull dumps, it seemed that the connection between the inflator hose and the jacket was not in the ideal position.

3. With such a huge difference between the actions of inflating or deflating, things were more intuitive and created less task loading. I did not need to locate my inflator, hold it up, and then remember which button to push to dump. To deflate, I simply pulled. To inflate, I pushed the button. Two distinct actions made it less of a task load to remember which one to do. In fact, I do recall that there was a story in the latest Scuba Diving magazine about a new diver who disappeared for a while, only to reappear later. Seems he'd pushed the wrong button and found himself on an elevator ride topside. Stupid but true. With a pull dump, this would not have happened. Good thing he wasn't diving in 300 feet of water!

4. I've found that some older BC's with aged rubber parts have their inflator hoses a little stiff, sometimes even enough to get in the way of vision when you are swimming horizontally. I've been hit in the face with one on more than one occasion by a certain BC I know. But if it were equipped with a pull dump, this would not be an issue. And if it was, I could rubber band that sucker down. Can't do that if you've got to raise it to dump.

Why in the world, with the DIR philosophy that Halycon seems to have, would they not persue the simpler operation of a pull dump? Is it just the second valve that they're looking to get rid of? (We all know that we'd need to keep the one on the end of the inflator hose so you could potentially breathe off of it in case of TWO failed regs, right?)

Yeah, if it's one thing that I wanted in bouyancy control, it was a pull dump. Doesn't seem to much to ask... Right? Weird.

Am I missing something?

Oh, and thanks for the web link. Interesting stuff!

 

[roakey]

Just about the most catastrophic failure you can have is a BC failure. Even an OOA if you have a buddy nearby you can get air, get to the surface, inflate your BC and get to the boat (or shore) easily. Contrast this with a BC failure. Here you’re now faced with either a lot of exertion swimming the rig up or dumping your weights, which more often than not results in an uncontrolled ascent, possible DCS, etc.

Now unless you’re Mike Nelson and are attacked by people with knives every day, the most fragile and prone to failure part of a BC is the inflation hose and its connections. So to protect this piece of equipment you should stress it as little as possible.

But what to the brains at the color-is-our-most-important-innovation BC design center do? They ENCOURAGE you to yank on the most delicate part of this critical piece of equipment.

Stop falling in love with the gimmicks and think about how they effect your diving. If you’re properly trimmed the rear dump works perfectly on a wing. If you’re trimmed vertically (read: wrong) then you’re right, a pull dump is just the piece of equipment required to capitalize on your poor form.

Roak

 

[SeaJay]

Interesting. Never thought of that.

Of course, that's why I subscribe to this board!

Wow.

Just how valid is the worry that one of these things might separate from the bladder? Amazing.

What other problems could there be that I'm not thinking of? Man, I don't even want to know.

Yes I do.

 

[roakey]

Originally posted by SeaJay
Just how valid is the worry that one of these things might separate from the bladder? Amazing.

Let’s see, the cable that actually activates the shoulder dump is inside the corrugated BC hose where it’s hard to inspect, hard to rinse and stays moist all the time. This makes it a real good candidate for failure (when’s the last time you inspected your pull dump cable? Get my point now?)

If you’re used to dumping from the shoulder, that’s become habit and it’s going to take you a little while to switch to a different method.

So, you start your ascent, pull your corrugated hose and the cable breaks. Because of the environment’s hysteresis you don’t wait for feedback, you just burp it [at least you think so] and fine tune with your breathing. But you continue to accelerate, so you pull again. You’re still accelerating, so you pull again. It hasn’t sunk in that it’s not working yet, but the stress level is raising so even though you don’t need to, you pull harder. And harder. One of two things will happen. Either finally it’ll sink in that it’s not working and you’ll switch to an unpracticed method or you’ll pull so hard that you’ll tear the hose (especially if it’s older BC) or pull the hose off the shoulder dump valve (note I’m not talking about pulling the hose off the bladder).

So there’s a high probability that you’re ascending dangerously fast by the time you figure things out and then you either hope you can arrest your ascent or you tear or yank the hose off the dump valve which certainly halts your ascent and starts you on a plummet.

Correctly trimmed, the rear dump works just fine. If you get a proper length corrugated hose like comes on Halcyon wings, you anchor it at your left shoulder blade. This makes it so high that if you’re coming up in a head-up position, you can lift it without taking it out of the bungee and dump from the “top” of the BC.

Fewer failure points, less stress on the mechanism and a more reliable system.

Roak

 

[roakey]

I just read over my last reply and I don't like it. Though valid, it completely misses the point, which is:

Shoulder dumps are not necessary if you're correctly trimmed in the water.

Roak

 

[JimC]

My BC has a pull dump.

I used it for 2 dives.

I was rinsing my gear, and checking all the parts.. and my bc inflator hose came off. OMG was I horified.

2 dives and my inflator hose came off from yanking on the damn pull dump. If this had happened at 60 feet in the 5 knot current I was diving in it would have been very.. interesting.

Needless to say I don't use the pull dump any more. I don't even dump out of my inflator hose anymore. The rear dump is just more convinient and easier to manipulate. Horizontal position, a little kick up of the butt and a pull on the cord. After 4-5 tries you'll never go back to messing around with your inflator.

1. Typically, I'm diving from a boat...

Decent horizontaly, use the rear pull dump. When I go down, I stick my face in the water, empty off the rear dump, exhale and slide into the water.

2. For this same reason...

Push your butt up a few inches and getting the air out of the bc from the rear dump does the same, completely empty. It does however take a little practice to beable to find and manipulate the valve.

3. With such a huge difference between the actions of inflating or deflating...

Rear dump is not even on the same device. No posibility of pushing the wrong button.

4. I've found that some older BC's with aged rubber parts

Again, not a problem.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Roakey is right, pull dumps are not needed and they fail. Therefor you are better off without them.

 

[redacted]

Does anyone make a wing with a pull dump or one that can be replaced with a pull dump valve? Does going to a backplate and wing mean you have to sacrifice a pull dump capability?

 

[FredT]

Originally posted by awap
Does anyone make a wing with a pull dump or one that can be replaced with a pull dump valve? Does going to a backplate and wing mean you have to sacrifice a pull dump capability?

The Northern Diver X-wing has a pull dump. Also the fittings that go into the bladder are fairly standard. OTOH due to the failure rate of these things the parts are pretty common. If you want one on most rigs, you simply buy one from the "parts bin" at the LDS and have them install it.

The flip side is that if you have a dump and don't want one it's generally easy to get rid of it too. Eiither strip the guts out of the one you have, if that is applicable, or replace it with a simple elbow from a different manufacturer. You'll have a better than 50-50 chance the threads will fit.


Note: Most mainline SCUBA "Manufacturers" don't make their own gear. Many design the stuff using "standard" bits where ever practical. OPVs are a typical example. They come in one size, but with several springs and a few options. Molded parts are expensive to tool, and require high volume to make effectivly. Most simply buy what they can with the addition of a "custom" cover. Thus they buy one mold instead of several, and often the logo is part of an insert so several companies can "share" a common part mold.

FT