SlugLife
Contributor
Yes, much of technical-diving gear can be used for recreational diving. There are several problems though:Its not a matter of technical diving or not.
As I said before: almost the same configuration used for technical diving can be used for recreational one.
I understand the BP/W setup was born for technical diving, but it is not like that anymore.
- Cost: Much of the gear may be more expensive. Plus, if someone dives 5 times per year, mostly in the Caribbean, what's the point of having a $1200 computer, $2000 regulators, and $3000 drysuit?
- Knowledge: A beginner diver doesn't know what they're looking at or shopping for. Hell, I didn't REALLY understand regulators 3 months into diving. I mostly thought of them as a mess of hoses. Sure, I understood what things were for, but didn't understand you could swap parts around, change hose-lengths, etc. (And now I service my own regs)
- Applicability: A new diver is unlikely to know what kind of diving they may want to do in 2-5 years. Personally, I got big into SideMount, which is a completely different gear-configuration than anything talked about here. As another example, you can spend $900 on a computer, only to later realize you really wanted air-integration or Bluetooth sync.
I'm a Sr Software engineer, that's done a good bit of mentoring. Perhaps one of the biggest things in mentoring (aside from listening) is to carefully remember and consider what the inexperienced person does not know. A consistent thread in the advice I see you giving, is that you seem to implicitly assume these new divers know and understand a bunch of things, that they're unlikely to know.
I do agree that a Backplate + Wing setup is actually a good piece of equipment for a brand new diver, even though some people classify that as "technical equipment" it's really something a new diver can grow into, doesn't cost more, and the fact that it may not be perfect for that diver is really one of the BP+W features, in that you can swap parts, adjust it, upgrade it, etc. It's not good for a new diver because it's technical, but rather because of the modularity.
A lot of other technical equipment really doesn't work that way. If your computer doesn't have Air Integration, and you want AI, you need a new computer. If your regs aren't made for cold-water, ultra-deep, or salt-water dives, you may discover you want or need completely different regs. Even fins; some fins are great for flutter kick ,but terrible at frog or reverse kick .... or vice-versa.
To use an extreme and somewhat absurd example, if I slapped my sidemount rig on a brand new diver they'd be absolutely miserable, and not because there's anything wrong with my equipment.