BC's with "Elevator" Lever

[zen_man]

And Scotsmen.

You love your Scotsmen?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You love your Scotsmen?

I think he meant Scotsmen like bags, as in bag pipes.

 

[zen_man]

I think he meant Scotsmen like bags, as in bag pipes.

yeah, yeah, just making a bad joke.

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

I thought the entire purpose of the oral inflater was for an "out of air situation" where you are at the surface and need to inflate your BC so that you relax while either swimming back to shore or waiting for the boat to come get you, thus expending less energy trying to keep your head above water with an empty BC. At least that was what I was taught...

It's a good argument against this BCD. One should definitely be able to inflate it orally with ease at the surface. With this thing it's hard. I've had a look at it.

Putting aside all the other issues that have been brought up, I can see the lever as being a much better method for inflation/deflation for a diver like me who suffers from basal thumb arthritis. On all dives and especially on cold dives, it is always painful and often difficult for me to push the buttons with my thumb. Sometimes I've even had to use both hands to get enough strength to inflate/deflate. A lever would make things much easier for me.

Good argument PRO the lever! I've seen students who have problems with the knobs on a regular inflator due to weak fingers. -And no arthritis even... The lever IS easier for some to operate .



However, the main argument against it in my opinion is buddy knowledge. Like with long hoses you need to practice. If you're a "holiday diver" with no regular buddy you may find yourself in trouble if your buddy needs to inflate your BCD.

And the marketing of this BCD is definitely towards novice divers who will, for some reason, swallow the arguments in the ads most easily. Us oldtimers are much more sceptical to "new" ideas. We ought to be. We've probably seen some bad tricks before... I for one will not sell this BCD to anyone (except maybe divers with arthritis, but there aren't any up here in the north...). We have a novice diver in our club who came home from Texas with one of these. It took him some 20 dives to figure it needed to be sold, and yes he did get a wing and a backplate which he is much more happy with.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

It's a good argument against this BCD. One should definitely be able to inflate it orally with ease at the surface. With this thing it's hard. I've had a look at it.




Good argument PRO the lever! I've seen students who have problems with the knobs on a regular inflator due to weak fingers. -And no arthritis even... The lever IS easier for some to operate .



However, the main argument against it in my opinion is buddy knowledge. Like with long hoses you need to practice. If you're a "holiday diver" with no regular buddy you may find yourself in trouble if your buddy needs to inflate your BCD.

And the marketing of this BCD is definitely towards novice divers who will, for some reason, swallow the arguments in the ads most easily. Us oldtimers are much more sceptical to "new" ideas. We ought to be. We've probably seen some bad tricks before... I for one will not sell this BCD to anyone (except maybe divers with arthritis, but there aren't any up here in the north...). We have a novice diver in our club who came home from Texas with one of these. It took him some 20 dives to figure it needed to be sold, and yes he did get a wing and a backplate which he is much more happy with.

Thank you Kompressor for this post.
I see this contraption as a gimmicky device to lure in new divers that have money burning a hole in their pockets.
It is marketed towards new divers. They don't have the experience yet to see that less is more. Eventually most divers tend to remove clutter as they realize they don't need half the crap they take on a dive. This finally ends up at the BCD when they look around and realize everyone else has moved on to a BP/W.

But the sad part is that they will defend their purchace of the "contraption" because they paid a small fortune for it. Some of this I think is out of embarrassment and the rest is probably out of frustration knowing that they blew it but are too proud to admit it. Eventually the "newest, baddest, trickest" thing passes and they move on, but it's hard to watch them blow all that money when you know they could have saved it and spent half on something like a BP/W which they will probably wind up with in the end.

Sighhhh...

 

[old gaffer]

I am curious, I have never seen a backplate/wing available as rental gear and when I have needed to rent they only had jacket style bc's. If they suck so bad and are so expensive then why do the dive op's rent them over backplate/wings? It is because average divers are familiar with them and the dive ops do not make any money off of all the expert divers out there they make money off the average divers.

I think it is like golf where a low handicapper will only use forged irons because they have very defined skills for the game and that is the best club for a good golfer. A high handicapper on the other hand needs a forgiving club with a large sweet spot perimeter weighting and so forth. 70% of all golfers rarely break 100 so all of the gimmicky marketing is aimed at them so they must sift through the BS by educating themselves via user golf forums and it it there that they also must sift through the advice by all the good golfers that tell them they must use forged irons because they are the best (even though a high handicapper would never be able to hit them) It is a vicious cycle and I guess it happens in every sport.

Old Gaffer

 

[mikeguerrero]

I am curious, I have never seen a backplate/wing available as rental gear and when I have needed to rent they only had jacket style bc's. If they suck so bad and are so expensive then why do the dive op's rent them over backplate/wings? It is because average divers are familiar with them and the dive ops do not make any money off of all the expert divers out there they make money off the average divers.

I think it is like golf where a low handicapper will only use forged irons because they have very defined skills for the game and that is the best club for a good golfer. A high handicapper on the other hand needs a forgiving club with a large sweet spot perimeter weighting and so forth. 70% of all golfers rarely break 100 so all of the gimmicky marketing is aimed at them so they must sift through the BS by educating themselves via user golf forums and it it there that they also must sift through the advice by all the good golfers that tell them they must use forged irons because they are the best (even though a high handicapper would never be able to hit them) It is a vicious cycle and I guess it happens in every sport.

Old Gaffer

I think Gaffer has nailed it to the cross...

When I started OW classes, all I trained on was old style equipment both jacket and back inflate.

I didn't see any Apeks or Diverite equipment which is where we see the BP/wings options. If they had it then it was very limited, small section.

I went with what they had at the shop even though my dive instructor was all tech. She did encourage me to get stuff outside the shop but I didn't listen.

I went with everything they had there, like a child in the candy store. If the dive shops would have been more open to the professional line of equipment, I think I would have gone that route.

I do like the style of DUI drysuits and Apeks equipment but that doesn't mean I'm not getting enjoyment out of my current setup.

I don't regret getting any of my equipment in fact I would still recommend it to another diver.

Diving is about having fun while remaining safe; I have dove with the i3 and yet with it's simplicity have had fun and been safe.

Why would I not pass this positive experience to another diver?

MG

 

[vixtor]

There is a huge lack of information and logic in the posts against the i3, and if this would not be enough, they are mixed with answers against any BCD and pro BP/W.

1. BCD versus BP/W shape. Maybe the BP/W is cool for you. I fail to see the huge advantage of one setup versus the other. In the end, they are just bags of air. What would be important for both of them:
- to have reliable materials, so they will not leak air/explode/whatever
- to not hold air in places hard to dump (and have valves in the proper places)
- to stay in place (not roll arround the diver, etc.)
- to be confortable to wear, both in water and on land, and easy to adjust
- to have good inflate/deflate equipments installed
Everything else is not important. I have tried a BP/W once, and I don't get it. There is no huge advantage of one technology versus the other. A good BCD is more confortable for me than the harness and the steel plate pressed against my back. Maybe a plate properly covered with soft materials on my back, and a harness with similar protection would be confortable. But the usual setups are not. But even this is not important. The main idea is that there is no important advantage of one setup over the other - both are the exact same technology: a bag of air that you wear. There is nothing that would make a BCD explode just because is not your beloved BP/W. And there is nothing wrong with the BP/W also. But please don't forget: we don't discuss BCD verus BP/W here. We just discuss standard inflator versus I3.

2. Traditional inflator hose versus I3. Honestly, although I like the BCD style, if the I3 would have been installed on a BP/W, for me it would have been the reason to switch . Maybe replace the hose with a thin steel wire (after all, that's the I3 technology), that can be clipped to the harness, on your chest. Again, there is nothing wrong with the I3, except that you are not familiar with it. Just imagine that your grand-grand-father was not familiar with cars, and he really loved his horses. Still you drive a car instead of riding to work. The world changes arround you. Maybe the I3 will catch, or maybe not. But you can bet that the world of diving 20 years from now will be totally different from the technology that you love so much. I am the kind of guy that mistakes right and left hand. There are times when I am not sure which is the inflate and which is the deflate button on a normal hose. There are times when I search the hose that floats arround me. But the I3 is always there, and the idea of "up" (towards head) for inflate, "down" (towards feet) for deflate makes sense for me. And no, not as an elevator, but used properly ("up" during descents, "down" during ascents).

I don't care if the world moved to BP/W setups. I don't care if you don't like my gear (after all, you try to convince me to use a BP/W instead of a BCD, and a inflator hose instead of the I3). I will drop my I3 BCD if I will discover any problems with it, but for now I am happy about it.

I have opened this thread hoping to find any discussion about the push rod technology, if there is anything unreliable about it, to find out if any divers had problems with it, and so on. Instead of that, I am just reading ideas like "it is not what I used in the last 20 years, so I don't like it and I would never try it", and a lot of false assumptions about it (based on the Aqualung marketing, but on no real experience with the equipment). When somebody tried to put down bad things about it, none of them were true (and the guy just didn't know enough about it).

And the safety issue - the fact that my buddy might not know how to use it. Guess what - usually, most of us dive with friends. My friends know about it - they have tried it and they are thinking about switching to the I3 (which they loved), so I have fixed this issue

Thank you Kompressor for this post.
I see this contraption as a gimmicky device to lure in new divers that have money burning a hole in their pockets.
It is marketed towards new divers. They don't have the experience yet to see that less is more. Eventually most divers tend to remove clutter as they realize they don't need half the crap they take on a dive. This finally ends up at the BCD when they look around and realize everyone else has moved on to a BP/W.

But the sad part is that they will defend their purchace of the "contraption" because they paid a small fortune for it. Some of this I think is out of embarrassment and the rest is probably out of frustration knowing that they blew it but are too proud to admit it. Eventually the "newest, baddest, trickest" thing passes and they move on, but it's hard to watch them blow all that money when you know they could have saved it and spent half on something like a BP/W which they will probably wind up with in the end.

Sighhhh...

 

[Coelacanth]

It's a good argument against this BCD. One should definitely be able to inflate it orally with ease at the surface. With this thing it's hard. I've had a look at it.

When I gave it a shot, I found it much easier to just press the i3 mouthpiece against your lips than the mouthpiece and (very stiff) button combo I was certified with was. In fact the ease of the oral inflation, along with other things like the integrated weights, was one of the things that convinced me to buy it. Mmmm, integrated weights...

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I am curious, I have never seen a backplate/wing available as rental gear and when I have needed to rent they only had jacket style bc's. If they suck so bad and are so expensive then why do the dive op's rent them over backplate/wings? It is because average divers are familiar with them and the dive ops do not make any money off of all the expert divers out there they make money off the average divers.

Old Gaffer

That's easy,
Because 99.9% of the new divers out there have been trained using elevator jackets and that's what they're familiar with. It has nothing to do with BP/W's sucking or not sucking, it's just a matter of what the dive shop can rent quickly with the least hassle. Dive shops also get huge incentives from the manufacturers to load up their rental fleets with whatever the BC of the year is.
With BP/W or minimalist packpack set up there is a personal fitting aspect to the rig which makes it a PITA for dive shops to deal with who just want to get the customer on his/her way. There is also somewhat of a learning curve with BP/W and generally this is fulfilled by some type of mentoring dive buddy or club that's into this style of diving.
There are some dive shops that have stepped into the future and do rent BP/W's but they are far and few between. More and more are at least beginning to carry plates so that's encouraging. It's going to take a long time, but there's definitely no turning back with the new (or old) minimalist philosophy.

You have to realize that jackets have been around now for quite some time. I don't think they took off because they were better, I think they took off because of marketing and they allowed divers with not so great watermanship skills to feel comfortable. They also looked cool with all the features and colors; great for the showroom. But people didn't realize the sacrifices they were making in streamlining and simplicity. Now, thanks largely to the DIR school (I'm not a kool-aider BTW) BP/W or backpacks and a general move towards minimalism has seen a renaissance.

You seldom hear of someone starting with a BP/W and going to a jacket, but you always hear of people starting with a jacket and going to a BP/W and never looking back. I wonder why that is?