inverted manifolded twins

[PfcAJ]

You turn the valve off then what? Call it a day and head for zee hills?

I can shut of my valve and have my buddy come over and see if the problem can be fixed. He can see the problem better than I can, and since were facing each other, communicate the situation. If his head is by my butt, that's a little difficult.

 

[LiteHedded]

You turn the valve off then what? Call it a day and head for zee hills?

I can shut of my valve and have my buddy come over and see if the problem can be fixed. He can see the problem better than I can, and since were facing each other, communicate the situation. If his head is by my butt, that's a little difficult.

but sexy.

 

[Sas]

You turn the valve off then what? Call it a day and head for zee hills?

I can shut of my valve and have my buddy come over and see if the problem can be fixed. He can see the problem better than I can, and since were facing each other, communicate the situation. If his head is by my butt, that's a little difficult.

Whether this is an issue or not depends on the environment of the dive. There are other ways to communicate that don't involve needing sight of one's buddy and it's not hard to turn your head to look at them...

Now I dive manifolded twins, with valves up, and have never tried inverted twins (and have no plans to as I'm quite happy with how my setup works and don't see many benefits of switching) but neither have many in this thread... A lot of these issues you are raising are environment specific and may not be relevant at all to the OP. Not everyone dives in caves or wrecks.

It's not like everyone diving with the more common manifold setup knows how to use the system to get the benefits of it either - so many of the benefits people have raised for this system just don't apply to some people. I know people who cannot reach their valves, weird hose configurations, weight placement is wrong so they can't trim out, lots of entanglement hazards and so on.

DaleC, as usual, your posts are of good quality and without any snide remarks inferring the s-word, thank you.

 

[PfcAJ]

And you're right, not everyone dives wrecks or caves. What I'm describing works everywhere. Its pretty neato.

 

[ucfdiver]

And you're right, not everyone dives wrecks or caves. What I'm describing works everywhere. Its pretty neato.

And $100 says if rjack flies to Florida for some cave diving, we don't have to spend more than a minute discussing how our gear differs and why.

Much easier than these ways created that only work in a specific environment...I can spend my time diving and not tweaking gear, with the huge benefit of muscle memory staying the same for this week's 2 stage 4000ft cave penetration as I'll use in 3 weeks when I do a 40ft reef dive. Oh, and while you're in China, I can grab any of your gear and not have to adjust a darn thing. When you need another piece of gear, you can stop by my place to borrow something and dive it immediately, a benefit not even mentioned yet....I don't own a single piece of gear other than a drysuit that couldn't be replaced by just borrowing a spare from a dive buddy.

 

[ucfdiver]

Just playing devils advocate here... But I only see 2 valid points.

1- Cannot hear your valves. OK, give you that.
2- Cannot see your buddy while solving entanglement or gas issues. If your buddy is behind you, you can.
3- Cannot rent doubles setup for this configuration from most shops. cant rent double from most shops anyway
4- Additional unneeded cages for the valves. Unneeded can be said for ANY gear.
5- Whacky hose lengths. Can be said for 7 foot hoses in cave diving too.
6- Stage/Deco bottles block access to the valves. OK, thats 2
7- Cannot reach isolator. Do you know? have you ever tried it?
8- It looks silly. All diving gear looks silly.

2- You can't see your buddy behind you.
3- Just on my way to most dive sites here in Fl...Dayo Scuba, Birds Underwater, Cave Excursions East, Cave Excursions West, Dive Outpost, Cave Adventurers, Extreme Exposure, Greg Stantons, and I'm sure there's more I don't know about.
4- Not really.
5- No, a 7ft hose is absolutely necessary.
7- It's semi difficult to grab anything on the backside of your crotch dring and maintain trim, an isolator would be unacceptable if you had to do this in a low area of a wreck/cave.

 

[Sas]

And you're right, not everyone dives wrecks or caves. What I'm describing works everywhere. Its pretty neato.

There's a lot of things that work in diving. I dive with many different buddies and the type of diving I do mostly, the lack of standardisation between our gear is not an issue.

Much easier than these ways created that only work in a specific environment...I can spend my time diving and not tweaking gear, with the huge benefit of muscle memory staying the same for this week's 2 stage 4000ft cave penetration as I'll use in 3 weeks when I do a 40ft reef dive. Oh, and while you're in China, I can grab any of your gear and not have to adjust a darn thing. When you need another piece of gear, you can stop by my place to borrow something and dive it immediately, a benefit not even mentioned yet....I don't own a single piece of gear other than a drysuit that couldn't be replaced by just borrowing a spare from a dive buddy.

Yea I've borrowed lots of gear over the time I have been diving and have no trouble obtaining loans of gear when I need. I may get different gear each time but, again, with the type of diving I do, I have not found this to be a problem.

Basically, I swap between single and double setup all the time as my diving is quite varied. To me there is no one setup that suits all diving that I do. When I am under a pier I don't want to be using my twin 12s... so whatever, I use different stuff. I don't really understand the big drama about using different setups, I just do not find it a problem to adapt between gear setups but then again like the vast majority of divers, I am usually not doing dives where it matters.

 

[ucfdiver]

Basically, I swap between single and double setup all the time as my diving is quite varied. To me there is no one setup that suits all diving that I do. When I am under a pier I don't want to be using my twin 12s... so whatever, I use different stuff. I don't really understand the big drama about using different setups, I just do not find it a problem to adapt between gear setups but then again like the vast majority of divers, I am usually not doing dives where it matters.

Let's fast forward a bit...start borrowing stage regs, deco bottles, scooters. I bet pfcaj would be pretty pissed if he came back and I had taken his 120ft stickers off his stages and put 115ft stickers because I needed best mix. I bet he'd be pissed if I changed the tow cord on his Gavin that I used last weekend, or cut his stage reg up so he had to re-tie everything. I know I'd be pissed if he changed stuff on my stages, scooters, regs, etc.

It gets to be a huge plus when we're driving 3+hours to drive sites and have a single piece of gear fail when we get in the water. Nobody wants to wait an hour while stuff's reconfigured, we can grab anything off the back of whoever's car and swap it then get right back in the water.

 

[Sas]

Let's fast forward a bit...start borrowing stage regs, deco bottles, scooters. I bet pfcaj would be pretty pissed if he came back and I had taken his 120ft stickers off his stages and put 115ft stickers because I needed best mix. I bet he'd be pissed if I changed the tow cord on his Gavin that I used last weekend, or cut his stage reg up so he had to re-tie everything. I know I'd be pissed if he changed stuff on my stages, scooters, regs, etc.

Not everyone uses deco bottles, or stage bottles or scooters. And not everyone's buddies worry about stuff like that. I loaned out my twinset to a buddy recently for three weeks as he needed it for a course and does not have his own twinset. Harness was changed, bands shifted, reg hoses swapped, few other things. When he gave it back, he put it back the way I loaned it to him, no stress. But if not, I do know how to change it back to suit myself...

It gets to be a huge plus when we're driving 3+hours to drive sites and have a single piece of gear fail when we get in the water. Nobody wants to wait an hour while stuff's reconfigured, we can grab anything off the back of whoever's car and swap it then get right back in the water.

Not everyone has a three hour drive to a local site. The closest site to me is 20mins down the road and if I can't borrow gear that I am happy with (unlikely) I'll drive home. Some dives that I do, the issue you have raised is a problem, such as when I drive six hours to go cave diving but then, me and my cave buddy use the same gear and we have backups of most things between us. But for my other types of diving, I don't care, it just doesn't matter. You can't assume this is an issue for everyone though.

 

[PfcAJ]

This is almost laughable. Not everyone uses deco bottles? This is tech diving specialties forum, not basic scuba... our way allows use or nonuse of deco bottles, stages, scooters, lights, reels, lift bags, etc in ow, caves, wrecks, ocean, river, lake, shallow, deep, you name it. The same cannot be said of these other convoluted methods. Last time I did a 60ft reef dive, my equipment was essentially the same as my last 140ft cave dive with scooters, I just added the cave/ deep specific stuff. This isn't rocket surgery... On top of that, if someone wants to borrow something, it doesn't need to be adjusted, tweaked, or mess with. Simply add water and go dive.