First dive with bp/w

[SeanQ]

I have the same wing that you tried out. At first I felt that the inflator button would be better on the other side but now I like it on the outside. By simply bending my elbow I can reach up, grab the inflator with my hand and tap the button with my thumb. It is a different hand position that what you would use to dump the wing while holding the hose over your head.

I am cold water diver and normally need ~30lbs of weight. I'm planning on making more trim weights for my BP. By evenly distributing most of the weight across my back, my are hips not nearly as sore as they would be if I had put all the weight on a belt. The BP/W system provides a plethora of weighting options compared to the few available with a standard BC.

 

[jagfish]

Hey jagfish, what do you wear under that tri-lam suit?

If I used an SS plate (6 lb) plus heavy STA (6 lb) and only an extra 4 lbs with an AL80, even if I could sink at the start of the dive (which I couldn't), I'd pop up like a cork at the end.

I wear two layers of fleece all over plus wool socks and a double layer fleece vest. Maybe that's the difference.

LOL...

Yeah, what we think of as cold here barely passes as cool in other parts...

I wear polypro underwear and a 300 wt fleece suit. feet I have socks, fleece and thinsulate boots over.

However, that's why I also added that an 11 lb plate (Fred T) and 6 lb STA would be a respectable 17 pounds before adding anything else....combine this with 10 more pounds on a belt and that should allow for a lot more undergarment and/or body mass...

 

[Daryl Morse]

I dive cold and have a 10# plate and a 6# STA. Combined with an 8# weightbelt I find that I'm nicely trimmed out and weight doesn't hurt my back.
For warm water just switch over to an AL plate.

That's gotta be with a steel tank, right?

 

[grazie42]

I have a DR 6lb plate and another 10lbs on a weightbelt.
I dive dry (trilam) and use heave undergarments with a hp single steel tank.
Temps are going up (almost summer) but it was still a cool 7C/45F this weekend...

Regardless of how much weight you use I´m sure that you´ll find a BP/w gives you far more options of where to put the lead than most other systems. I don´t think anyones mentioned V-weights yet so if you haven´t looked into that it might me a way to go...

 

[Mark Vlahos]

It seems like a great idea having the inflator hose attach to the bladder where it does, but the downside is that when you're horizontal, you have to hold the hose up quite far to get the exhaust above the air exit point on the bladder. The hose seems a bit too short for that, but at the same time, I had a hard time finding it a couple of times because it flopped around. Do you get around this by using the pull dump when you're horizontal?

I think it'll take me a while to get used to the location of the pull dump. I can see why it's there (as opposed to the top), but I guess I'm a bit too used to the location of the pull dump on the BCD. Do you ever find it hard to locate the pull dump with a sling bottle in the way?

To make your inflator hose easier to find try putting a piece of innertube or a loop of bungie cord around the webbing harness somewhere high on your left shoulder. Thread the low pressure hose through this loop of bungie or innertube before you plug it into the inflator.

This when used in conjunction with innertube on the large inflator tube will keep the low pressure hose clean and neat while also keeping the entire assembly on your left shoulder easy to find.

Mark Vlahos