Jacket inflate vs Back inflate

[master00sniper]

'tellinmemo' is why you shouldn't post on forums using iPhones

 

[DevonDiver]

By all means feel free to post being a jackas*. Did you get any training thru DIR? I've heard they produce arrogant instructors.

An instructor with 2 decades and 3500+ dives experience explaining some facts to a newly qualifed OW student is not arrogance. It is what it is. Someone who knows, explaining stuff to someone who doesn't know.

My air consumption was excellent in my opinion,...

Self-assessment is a pretty inaccurate tool, when there is no experience to substantiate it.

....I can only imagine how smooth I could be with practice....

Fantasy vs Reality

Imagination is great.... but should not be the basis of boasting in public

 

[master00sniper]

Actually I've had quite a few takers during the short while I've been on this site, and with the air consumption you didn't quote my entire sentence. I was closer to my instructors air consumption (although still far from it) than I was to a lot of my classmates. Especially the ones hyperventilating under water lol. And he has more dives and years on you.

 

[DevonDiver]

It's always exciting to make scuba purchases. I'm a dive shop addict...always finding an excuse to spend money on kit... I am sure most of us on the forum will admit to that

Please don't mistake a debate on X vs Y, for being a criticism of your purchase. Neither is it a clash of egos.... after all, there isn't much ego boost from admitting how many mistakes you made in the past.

People here are just sharing opinions, experiences and hindsights for the benefit of those who don't yet know.

As the proverb says; a clever man learns from his mistakes, but a truly wise man learns from the mistakes of others

Someday in the future you may realise there was a better option..and that you could have saved time and money doing that from the start. I did. However, the BCD you bought will get you in the water...and give you bouyancy control...and help you float at the surface. You can go diving! Congrats and enjoy!

 

[knowone]

The only thing technical about diving is the people that confuse getting in and getting out of the water and doing some things in between with something that is complicated, like sex.:sleeping2:

 

[k ellis]

I wasn't sure whether to put this here or under the equipment section. I figured here because I'm new to diving. The few dives that I have done with rental equipment have been with a jacket inflate BCD. A local craigslist ad has this Seaquest Black Daimond BCD on sale for 250, excellent condition, only 10 dives on it. I'm assuming this is a good deal? What are the differences I should expect with a back inflate vs a jacket inflate?

the diffrences are trivial once you get used to both of them. One thing I love about a back inflate is mine (A zeagle ranger LTD) is that you feel more freer and it seems (Only an opinion) to be more spacious when putting it on or taking it off. Back inflates take some fine tuning though because you have to put just the right amount of air while on the surface. Too much has a tendancy to put you face down and not enough will not keep you above surface.

Jacket inflate to me is very uncomfortable as when you inflate the bcd if you already have it secure and tight around the waste then it will tighten up a little bit and cause you to be uncomfortable.

 

[tbone1004]

Looks like you got a good deal on a BC that will serve you quite well and depending on what type of diving you do, may be just fine for years to come. Just don't ever get caught up in the idea that one type of equipment over the other is going to make you a better diver. You will become a better diver by diving, diving, and then diving some more.

As much as he probably doesn't want to here it, I bet you Andy looks the same diving in a Poodle jacket as he does in his Eclipse

That being said, I don't use a HOG harness because of physical limitations. I also sidemount, so nothing about that is really DIR, although with the exception of my Nomad I follow most of their rules. I can't get in and out of one because of my shoulders, so I use a harness where the shoulder straps come down to my hip bone instead of the backplate. I use a chest strap because it makes carrying things comfortable, and no I'm not worried about failure points caused by a D-Ring because the odds of it failing underwater with no real weight on it is negligible. That being said, dangly things tick me off, and all of my straps are clipped. My chest strap is only adjustable from one side, and the cinch straps on my shoulder straps are tied back into themselves with slide locks.
SCUBA Diving Equipment for Technical, Sidemount, Rebreather, Wreck and Cave Diving: Dive Rite, Inc - Product Catalog - Deluxe Harness
That's the harness I use, and it really does make a tremendous difference when you have a 52" chest and a 36" waist...

Those dump valves are hilarious though...
Waist strap is hilarious. I'll never use plastic buckles, they sucketh majoreth, and especially not adjustable from both sides... I like my crotch strap in the middle thank you very much.

I use an inflater cover thingamabob on my Nomad to hold my backup lights up, but on my harness the inflater is held down with a piece of bungee threaded under the D-ring slide lock.

You may like all of your D-rings to clip stuff off to, but that ranger is a smidge overkill... One on my crotch strap, which usually has my slate clipped on it for OW stuff. One on each hip. SPG on left, right is open, but is there for stage bottles and to hold a pocket in place.
Two on each shoulder, lower for clipping tank, upper for holding backup lights. *when I dive my plate though most of these D-rings go away though. One on each shoulder, one on each hip, one on crotch strap and done*

I'm not sure what kind of diving you're doing to clip a whole bunch of stuff off, but there isn't a whole lot of stuff to carry... SMB and/or liftbag goes in pouch on backplate. Backup lights are clipped to shoulder D-rings. Slate is usually on wrist, but my compass slate for OW is clipped to crotch strap or left hip with my SPG... Camera on right hip.

What else are you carrying? That's my question. If we can go through caves and go through long deep wreck penetrations with those, I dunno what else you could need...

Knives. Ok I've got a Z knife on my right shoulder and left hip. Shears on my left hip. Couple smaller knives stashed in various places. If I'm spearfishing I have a big knife on my thigh. As an OW diver, you could justify a Z-knife and a normal dive knife, neither of which get clipped off to any D-rings

Reels. I keep mine on quicklinks on my hardplate or butt rails on my Nomad. No reason for OW to have those though...

Trying to think what else... Cookies and line arrows, no reason for those in OW but those are on my crotch strap D-ring.



As far as the DIR guys being arrogant. They're set in their ways and highly opinionated, but if they weren't, they'd all probably be dead... The way they dive works, period. A lot of us don't believe in the DIR approach, just because we don't think one set of gear is appropriate for all situations, but at the same time, we follow probably 95% of their stuff. I use a short hose in open water instead of a long hose, I solo dive on occasion, but that's when I'm babysitting OW students, or filming/photographing, and river diving. Rather hard to buddy dive when doing any of that stuff...
All tech divers are opinionated in one way or another, and most of us are very confident in our abilities and those of our buddies, which can be perceived as arrogance, but once you get to that level it all makes sense.

All Andy was trying to do was save you time and money. People say setting up HOG harnesses is all tweaking and what not. Well to some extent it is, but it's really not all that bad. Takes half an hour max, and it's much better in the long run.

Long story short, don't take anything any of us say personally, and for $200 or whatever you paid for that bc, it'll probably be fine, and will be good to have around for travel or whatever.

And who cares about air consumption? One of my diving buddies is a girl. Her SAC is about .38, mine is about .5 ish. She is no better of a diver than me, but she's 5'2" and 120lbs, I'm 6'4" and 270. I'll ALWAYS burn more air than she does if everything else is equal. One of my instructors has a sac in the .6 range. He's a better diver than I am, but he just burns through more air because he's a cyclist, so he burns O2 faster. Doesn't mean he's a bad diver

 

[master00sniper]

You may like all of your D-rings to clip stuff off to, but that ranger is a smidge overkill...

I'm not sure what kind of diving you're doing to clip a whole bunch of stuff off, but there isn't a whole lot of stuff to carry...

What else are you carrying? That's my question...I dunno what else you could need...

Knives

Reels.

Trying to think what else...

As far as the DIR guys being arrogant. They're set in their ways and highly opinionated, but if they weren't, they'd all probably be dead... The way they dive works, period. A lot of us don't believe in the DIR approach, just because we don't think one set of gear is appropriate for all situations, but at the same time, we follow probably 95% of their stuff. I use a short hose in open water instead of a long hose, I solo dive on occasion, but that's when I'm babysitting OW students, or filming/photographing, and river diving. Rather hard to buddy dive when doing any of that stuff...
All tech divers are opinionated in one way or another, and most of us are very confident in our abilities and those of our buddies, which can be perceived as arrogance, but once you get to that level it all makes sense.

All Andy was trying to do was save you time and money. People say setting up HOG harnesses is all tweaking and what not. Well to some extent it is, but it's really not all that bad. Takes half an hour max, and it's much better in the long run.

Long story short, don't take anything any of us say personally, and for $200 or whatever you paid for that bc, it'll probably be fine, and will be good to have around for travel or whatever.

And who cares about air consumption? One of my diving buddies is a girl. Her SAC is about .38, mine is about .5 ish. She is no better of a diver than me, but she's 5'2" and 120lbs, I'm 6'4" and 270. I'll ALWAYS burn more air than she does if everything else is equal. One of my instructors has a sac in the .6 range. He's a better diver than I am, but he just burns through more air because he's a cyclist, so he burns O2 faster. Doesn't mean he's a bad diver

I don't clip a whole bunch of stuff on my BC. I have a knife slightly above my ankle, and one that I can mount on the BC (not sure if I want to or not), as well as a light that can mount on the BC (both came with the BC, if they are cheap, i'll probably just throw them away.

I think I like the different D rings to I can figure out where I want to put the few items I probably will have clipped onto my BC, if clipped onto my BC at all.

Also, at your comment about air consumption,

 

[Crush]

By all means feel free to post being a jackas*. Did you get any training thru DIR? I've heard they produce arrogant instructors. My air consumption was excellent in my opinion, especially comparing myself to the rest of my classmates. That's not to say I don't want to better myself, but that comes over time. I moved in the water with relative ease, even for my first time in a cold water ocean. I can only imagine how smooth I could be with practice in my outdated mainstream short lasting bcd. And, anyone who doesn't want to dive with me doesn't deserve too. Its that simple

I have personally found that the most vocal DIR people are those with the zeal of the newly-initiated. The older DIR folks tend to be very nice and cool.

FWIW, you shouldn't confuse BP/w with DIR - George Irvine III coined the phrase Doing It Right in 1995 when referring to the Woodville Karst Plain Project. He appropriated the "DIR" gear configuration of William Hogarth Main (hence the term "Hogarthian"). DIR did not invent the Hogarthian BP/w - they copied it from a very skilled cave diver who was not DIR. You can find many National Speleological Society Cave Divers and National Association of Cave Divers members who might "look DIR" but in reality they look "cave diver" (trust me - they may be offended if you suggest that they look "DIR").

 

[DevonDiver]

As much as he probably doesn't want to here it, I bet you Andy looks the same diving in a Poodle jacket as he does in his Eclipse

I really do find a big difference in the feel of BP&W compared to a jacket. The only times I have worn jackets in the last 5 years was to run Rescue Diver courses, so that students get to practice on me. I feel like a piece of cr#p in a jacket... flopping all over the place...

Just to illustrate, here's me in my Eclipse, equipped with everything I need to dive and teach recreationally. Nothing dangles. Minimal water resistance. Minimal entanglement hazard. Minimal clutter and task-loading.

1) LED Torch
2) Titanium Knife
3) 30m Reel
4) SPG
5) Lift Bag/DSMB (bungeed to bottom of BP)
6) Full Set of Instructor Slates (wetsuit pocket)