Apeks WTX travel backplate

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vixtor

Contributor
Messages
491
Reaction score
33
Location
Bucharest, Romania
# of dives
200 - 499
I've recently purchased the Apeks WTX ultralight travel backplate ( WTX: ultralight travel backplate | Apeks® ). I saw it mentioned a few times here, but no real reviews. I didn't had the opportunity to use it yet (this will happen in June, but meanwhile I have assembled it, so I can at least give some insight about this.

They say this is meant to be used with the one piece webbed harness, but i somehow doubt this. It would fit better with a harness made of separate pieces for each shoulder. The reason for this is that the shoulder triglide is not angled enough, nor is it wide enough to allow the stiff harness to pass through it at a 45 degree angle (as it does through the wider slot of the backplate. Because of this, I was only able to route the harness with a pretty ugly solution, as you can see in the pictures. I would love to see a version where those 2 triglides are much wider (2.82 inches instead of 2), to allow for a 45 degree position of the harness through them.

You can see in the 2nd photo how i routed the harness on the back side of the backplate between the 2 shoulder triglides. It doesn't bother with the wing installation but I just don't like how it looks there. If you have better ideas please let me know. It would probably work better with softer harness, but I prefer it stiff.

Otherwise, it fits pretty well and I think it is a very good travel solution.

P.S. I know that I haven't installed all the D-rings as expected, but for recreational travel having a chest d-ring and a hip one for SPG is more than enough and it saves some weight when you have 3 such wings in the luggage :-)
 

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I like that plate and the Mares, nice work. I have been using the similar Oxy UL plate since they came out. You could run the shoulder straps downward in a Vee as does Oxy and maybe have a sewing place to make a pocket for it to stick into:



I have my Oxy UL rigged traditional Hogarthian and a single piece webbing. Up top:



I use a tri-glide behind the plate rings at the two waist locations to lock the webbing rather than the rings themselves:

 

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