Is quick release important?

[taliesin58]

So yeah, any more advice on my particular setup?

 

[SkullDeformity]

That's about all you're going to get. Two sides totally unwilling to budge. Have your own mind and make the decision that makes sense to you.

 

[ZoCrowes255]

So yeah, any more advice on my particular setup?

Go to a pool try out your rig with the weight in different positions and see what works best for you. Make sure you aren't overweighted and then go from there. Read what has been said in this thread and make your own decision.

I've got 11 years of diving experience and 1000+ dives so I've had a chance to work with a lot of different rigs. When I was diving my backplate I rarely relied on more than the plate for weighting and I would occasionally throw on a weightbelt under the harness or use a steel tank if I needed more weight. Looking back on it I think it was a mistake for openwater dives.

Weigh the pros and cons of the situation and see what is the best option for you. If you don't think you'll ever need to ever ditch any weight in an emergency (at the surface or underwater) then put the weight wherever you think you need it to get comfortable and to maintain good trim underwater.

That's about all you're going to get. Two sides totally unwilling to budge. Have your own mind and make the decision that makes sense to you.

You were so eager to debate earlier. What happened? I'm an openminded guy. I dove and taught in a Hogarthian rig for about a year. What made you so sure earlier? What do you have to compare it to? I don't want to derail the thread anymore than it already is so you can tell me in PM if you want. I am curious.

 

[shellbackdiver1]

My set up is bpw (SS), I don't wear any ditchable weight. With an Al80 I am negative at the begining and slightly at end of the dive. However if I put a vest on then im just about right. I do not wear any ditchable weight when diving for fun. I figure that if there comes a time that I need ditchable weight I have made a serious mistake and only a knife will be needed to cut the harness off of my dead body.

 

[victor]

Taliesin58
You might like to try an experiment next time your in shallow water.
I have had to do this for real at about 60ft.

My tank came loose, yes my fault I did not wet the cam band and it streached when it got wet.
No big deal, empty all air out of BC, remove BC, swim around behind it, rearange tank and tighten band, put gear back on and away we go.

With your configuration you are going to have grave difficulty staying with your gear. As you say without your BC you bob like a cork.

If it was me I would weight my tank so it was neutral or slightly negative and me with my weight belt slightly positive.

The weight is in pockets attached to my harness right up against my tank. Only a little is attached to the cam band. I am quite large (6'4", 185 lbs, and a little bit of pudge) so when I am covered head to toe in neoprene, I bob like a cork. About half of my weight is in the pockets, a little less than half is the backplate, and the rest is on my tank.

Everyone else, play nice. :hug:

 

[Lucy's Diver]

Give me one situation where I can't maintain postive buoyancy with just my BC. There is no difference between OW diving and more technical diving, except in mindset and attitude. What works 220 feet down in a wreck or thousand of feet back in a cave works in a less dangerous and complex situation. Saying openwater in bold is not a magic word.

I'll give you two, both of which I helped fix/rescue on a recent dive trip:

Sand or debris stuck in the power inflator, attempts to blast air into it both through the inflator and orally send air right out the dump. This happened to my brother (in rental gear) at depth, who was my dive buddy at the time. I was able to fix it at depth, but my scientific smack it a few times repair method could just have likely been unsuccessful.

Panicked diver at the surface. A stranger on the dive boat, who was wearing real tech oriented gear and claimed to be a northeast wreck diver, freaked at the surface. Much easier to just reach in and grab a weight release and yank than to reach in, find the power inflator, find the right button, and hold it down for a period of time while she was flailing.

 

[Lucy's Diver]

I have looked at a BP/Wing setup for warm water diving but I worry about using a steel tank in this configuration as I would be negative without any lead.
It is, or so I have been told, easy to get someone out of a hog harness when you know how, but would a strugling rescuer be able to do it.
QUOTE]

It is amazing what one can do with a seat belt knife. My dive knife has a blunt tip and a culling hook made for slicing fishing line and harness webbing.

Lucy's Diver, nice avitar, is that an SL17A or SL17B?

17B. More of my work dives are AGA than hard hat, but I get in the big yellow hat as much as I can.

 

[Nudgeroni]

Safety is found in redundant systems. The two most important things you need as a diver is air and the ability to get to the surface. The air is made redundant with the octo or pony, buoyancy is made redundant with the ditchable weight. I have not yet read any post here that makes a solid point that it is less safe with ditchable weight.

Since I am pretty 'wet' yet, I am open to the arguments that ditchable weights are unsafe.

 

[Nudgeroni]

oops. Sorry for the double post

 

[SkullDeformity]

I'm waiting for the torrent of situations in which I cannot maintain positive buoyancy at the surface. So far, there have been.....two.....rare circumstances. Since I'll be in a drysuit well before 1000 dives when my corregated hose will invariably rupture, causing me to die, I'm not too worried about that. Even diving wet, my rig is at worst 2lbs negative. I'll be able to kick at the surface that EASY. Debris in my power inflator? I don't set my junk down in sand.

Don't tell me I need ditchable weight on my drysuit configuration. That is ridiculous. How many failures are you going to plan for?