Are you all just technical? What is technical?

[TSandM]

I think it's great that you have a bright yellow harness. I like yellow harnesses, as you can see:

 

[gavstang]

More profit for the LDS. Duh!

As it has been often said, "the best way to save money on dive gear is to buy your second set of gear first."

I started off with my beloved Zeagle. Worked great. I was happy.

I tried a BP/W and it worked better. Lost 10 pounds of lead. Gained better trim. Plus, I was more efficient underwater and, to my surprise, surface swims became MUCH easier.

My beloved, trusty Zeagle BC just sits in a bin in my dive cabinet. :-(


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Im using a Zeagle Scout which I love as its lightweight and a great travel BC, although I must say that the BP/W is intriguing me at the moment as most of my friends are using one and highly recommend it. I may decide to buy one later but I am more than happy with my Zeagle at the moment.

 

[Them]

I think it's great that you have a bright yellow harness. I like yellow harnesses, as you can see:

There is a pattern. My fins/mask/snorkel are all yellow. I have a motorcycle jacket that is the same fluorescent yellow (with a side of fluorescent red/orange). And my motorcycle is orange with a pair of bright yellow Pelican cases bolted on the back (and festooned with reflective tape) as luggage. It's not that I like the colors, I'm just paranoid. :sly:

 

[-hh]

Many would say that BP&W were a lot more comfortable than Jackets, which they are replacing...

Wasn't the point. The question was instructional gear and that's still mostly Jackets…their employment has many factors which influences their current Capital Equipment, including the retention of the status quo, which satisfies as "Good Enough".

And unless we have solid statistics, I'd refrain from making any claims about X replacing Y, etc. Anecdotally, I've seen fewer BP/Ws on dive boats in 2012 than in previous years.

Except that they often allow the diver to 'sink' inside the BCD, supported by their armpits, flailing on the surface with their arms jammed upwards..and chin barely above the water line… Crotch strap helps that immensely. Many jacket BCDs have crotch straps nowadays....?

The cummerbund is too loose, usually due to poor instructor guidance and supervision. The cummerbund is what replaces the crotch strap, and since back in the old days this was a huge improvement, because straps didn't used to be padded or more than an inch wide. Dive training was able to drop the very important additional instructional step of: "Address Left, Strap Right".

If a BP/W has a tailored fit, it doesn't need adjustment points…. To be honest, it's like arguing that a cheap 'off-the-shelf' suit is better than a tailored bespoke suit...because the cheap suit has braces to hold the trousers up..

Correct! The context here is rental gear for initial training – not a piece of gear that's customized for one diver's exclusive use. In this context, having an adequate ('good enough') fit that can be accomplished with minimized labor is what is optimal for the business.

As stated, my experience has been that many, many entry-level students are particularly 'uncomfortable' in a jacket BCD... assuming, that is, we are talking about in-water comfort... and not the convenience of the changing room...

Did you normalize that observation by the variable of the students' watermanship levels? Occam’s Razor applies, and there's a lot of divers today who can't swim, have a fear of the water, obese, claustrophobic, etc ... years ago, these simply weren't candidates.

I don't think that anyone claimed that BP/W was universally perfect. However, the positive testaments of those switching to BP/W grossly...vastly outnumber the very infrequent negative ones from divers switching from a BP/W.

Statistically, P(B|A) is significantly more likely than P(A|B|A), even before one considers the potential for reporting bias (self selection), let alone how one will address purchase commitment based placebo effects. It is very well known within the behavioral phychology community that people are generally unwilling to admit that an expensive purchase wasn't a good decision. For example, a study some years ago found that new car owners reported "would buy again" values of 95-99%, but when later follow-up, researchers found that the odds of them simply buying the same brand of car was <50%. People say one thing, but do another.

I think the whole point of this thread was to question whether BP/W was 'technical'. The resounding answer is 'no. It is a migration of technology/configuration from the technical community (a 'best practice'), but there is nothing remotely 'technical' about a single-tank wing on a backplate.

Right - - which is precisely why we do need to be cautious about adopting it based on aspirational ('Hero') perceptions, which is partly where placebo effects behaviorally originate. A key in the decision making process is to understand that characteristics which make it optimal for double tank use doesn't automatically apply to singles.

...and there are statistics about diver progression to technical diving... I'm sure most agencies can supply them.

Yes, but those stats aren&#8217;t commonly found in Open Literature. From some indirect digging, there's reportedly ~17K new PADI leaders per year, out of ~930K certifications in 2011, which is <2%.

Somewhat similarly, there's estimated to be <5K active Cave divers, but this number gets baselined by all active divers, which has been estimated at 1.2M&#8230;conservatively, we'll double it to capture Wreck divers - - the number is still under 1%.

(tech is) It's a booming activity... evidenced by a rapidly expanding technical diving curriculum, flourishing numbers of technical diving instructors/centers...

That market segment spends a disproportionately larger amount of money, and businesses aren't stupid. Occam&#8217;s Razor again.

First and foremost, diving is a business whose objective invariably includes taking the customer's money.

Thus, if the customer wants his dive gear to be bright yellow, then bright yellow it is&#8230;and I do wish I was joking: look at the cover photos of Skin Diver Magazine from IIRC, ~1990.

...and based on the harness comments here, it looks like Yellow is becoming popular again. I wonder if that means that we'll see marketing soon to try to bring back blues ... wetsuits, wings, etc? It has been quite awhile since I had a blue & yellow wetsuit.


-hh

 

[jonnythan]

The cummerbund is too loose, usually due to poor instructor guidance and supervision. The cummerbund is what replaces the crotch strap, and since back in the old days this was a huge improvement, because straps didn't used to be padded or more than an inch wide. Dive training was able to drop the very important additional instructional step of: "Address Left, Strap Right".

For someone without a gut, it's practically impossible to crank the cummerbund down tightly enough to prevent "sinking" in the BC at the surface when it's highly inflated.

 

[Them]

Thus, if the customer wants his dive gear to be bright yellow, then bright yellow it is&#8230;and I do wish I was joking: look at the cover photos of Skin Diver Magazine from IIRC, ~1990.

...and based on the harness comments here, it looks like Yellow is becoming popular again.

FWIW... don't take my choices as in any way indicative of "popular".

I'm just about the biggest dork around when it comes to color choices for any activity where I'm unavoidably vulnerable to the incompetence of others. I know that's a horrible way to say it but I'm a horrible person. I don't want people driving cars into me, mistaking me for a tasty animal, taxing onto a runway I'm landing on, running boats over me, etc., and I'm willing to look like a circus clown if that has even a chance of lowering the skill needed by others to avoid harming me. Yeah, sad, but that's me.

 

[nimoh]

on a dive last weekend, we had very bad visibility (about 10') and my gear is all black, except that I was carrying a bright yellow dsmb on my rear d-ring. After the dive, my buddy commented that there were parts of the dive, where that dsmb was the only thing he could see of me.

 

[Crush]

I think it's great that you have a bright yellow harness. I like yellow harnesses, as you can see:

TSandM, didn't you have an issue with coloured webbing - something about it not being as tough as black webbing? I am not trying to put words in your mouth - I thought that I recalled you posting that a while back. Am I mistaken?

---------- Post Merged at 06:52 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 06:43 AM ----------

Four D rings plus some belt slides, an oxy cheq Mach-V 30lb wing, dive right plate, scubapro tank bands, two xs weight pockets, no-name buckle and i can't remember who made the padded crotch strap. I probably need to figure out more weight/weight holders but it seems like there are some options there and I wanted to see how much weight i was talking about before I added expensive tear away pockets or the like.

To keep my waist weight pockets in place I drilled an extra hole into each side of my BP and secured the weight pockets to the BP with a zip tie. The pockets are still mounted on the belt but the zip ties keep them from sliding away from the BP.

Wenoka makes a very sweet titanium knife. I love titanium as a dive knife because Ti simply can't rust.



If you add shears to your gear you may find that the case loop is too large for metal keepers to hold in place. An extra SS buckle is very convenient to prevent the shear case from sliding about.

 

[Them]

on a dive last weekend, we had very bad visibility (about 10') and my gear is all black, except that I was carrying a bright yellow dsmb on my rear d-ring. After the dive, my buddy commented that there were parts of the dive, where that dsmb was the only thing he could see of me.

That's good too.

Joking about paranoia aside, it really comes down to a "form follows function" decision for me. If I see a functional reason to wear a suit that is green on one side, red on the other, has electric purple patches on the legs, and a reflective white hood, then I'm going to swallow my pride and be the dork wearing the clown suit.

Drop the functional blather and I'd be wearing black. I love black.

If you add shears to your gear you may find that the case loop is too large for metal keepers to hold in place. An extra SS buckle is very convenient to prevent the shear case from sliding about.

I badly need to go through and map out all of that gear, make/buy keepers, etc. I love EMT shears - I have a pair lashed to a roll bar on my jeep for example. A titanium knife sounds cool though my initial thought was to use a $12 Mora since I've got one lying around.

 

[James R]

The only thing I ever did with my fancy Ti dive knife was lose it, since that day I haven't carried a knife again. I carry one OMS line cutter, one $4 EMT shears wedged between the OMS line cutter case and my BP/W waist band and held there with a length of bungee, and another line cutter on my light's goodman handle. All those together work better than the knife I used to carry and cost about 1/3 of that knife.