Kiss sidewinder 2
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- Location
- Port Orchard, Washington State
- # of dives
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Facebook fanbois - most of whom have never consistently dived any other unit. And a good chunk of the sidewinder instructor corps flat out lie about their training and experience on the unit.
I dove a v2.7 Meg for nearly 3 years and 125-140 dives before getting the sidewinder. The built quality is night and day, there's a reason militaries around the world buy the Meg by the pallet-full. And here's the leaky brittle plastic sidewinder, with a terrible ADV, and cells exposed to the worst possible lung butter spooge which doesn't even have a CE tested scrubber duration :/
I still have the sidewinder, still dive it and would even recommend it to select folks. It does ONE thing really really well - small warm nitrox range caves. Outside of that niche application, there are better choices for most divers.
- Messages
- 13,937
- Reaction score
- 10,881
- Location
- Port Orchard, Washington State
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
- Messages
- 13,937
- Reaction score
- 10,881
- Location
- Port Orchard, Washington State
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
Who knows what will be on the market then, although there's A LOT to be said for diving a unit which is common amongst your buddy group. Diving a rare unit which nobody in BC dives poses real problems what you want to tweak your configuration or adapt to something new. Same with being on mixed unit boats or buddy groups, fixing all the quirky things is 100x harder when your buddy doesnt understand exactly *why* the CL is doing something or the bungies are too short or too long etc.
InWay2Deep
Contributor
Just to add another data point to the SW is **** discussion...I've got about 150hrs on mine, 60% of that in overhead (caves/mines). I have been diving is exclusively for almost 2 years now. I have no experience on any other CCR but have 5 years Sidemount experience.
Can you just slap it on your back and go splash, no, it's like covering yourself in wet spaghetti, but you get use to it, there's no Cell Protection or formal 'water trap' (other than the Counter Lung). I have flooded my unit to cell failure twice, it was due to a leak in the Counter Lung and both times was because I went 'head down', got a caustic on one of them and a CO2 hit on the other due to wet sorb (cans/lungs were full of water, thankfully at the end of the cave dive so only had 30 min on Bail Out). Those are HUGE negatives 100% agree.
However, I have no desire to get another CCR, well I do, but only so I can dive 2 CCR's instead of taking a bunch of bailout on long dives. I run a dual O2/MAV, keeps the clutter down on the chest. I like the price point and the service/support I get from KISS. I'm not sure what the suit heater issue is, I run a heater on mine and there's no 'pushing out'. As far as running multiple deco gases that's pretty easy by hooking them up to a low pressure inflator on the MAV, all my regs for stage/deco have LP hoses so I can plug in whatever I want and stay on loop.
The unit is designed for a specific purpose and does it well and for the price is a great way to get into CCR Cave diving. There are a few items that I do not like w/ the build quality but overall it's well built. The Loop connections/DSV is one area that I think is underbuilt, the rest is a tank.
I was in the same boat about 2 years ago, wait for the SW2 or just say screw it and get the SW1 or Gemini. Gemini instructors were few and far between so I just went in on the SW1 and so far do not regret a single dive that I've done on it. It's like a lego set, lots of aftermarket parts and you can mix/match/upgrade over time. If the SW2 ever does come to market w/ the promises they've been making then you can upgrade the SW1 overtime as well into a SW2.
Can you just slap it on your back and go splash, no, it's like covering yourself in wet spaghetti, but you get use to it, there's no Cell Protection or formal 'water trap' (other than the Counter Lung). I have flooded my unit to cell failure twice, it was due to a leak in the Counter Lung and both times was because I went 'head down', got a caustic on one of them and a CO2 hit on the other due to wet sorb (cans/lungs were full of water, thankfully at the end of the cave dive so only had 30 min on Bail Out). Those are HUGE negatives 100% agree.
However, I have no desire to get another CCR, well I do, but only so I can dive 2 CCR's instead of taking a bunch of bailout on long dives. I run a dual O2/MAV, keeps the clutter down on the chest. I like the price point and the service/support I get from KISS. I'm not sure what the suit heater issue is, I run a heater on mine and there's no 'pushing out'. As far as running multiple deco gases that's pretty easy by hooking them up to a low pressure inflator on the MAV, all my regs for stage/deco have LP hoses so I can plug in whatever I want and stay on loop.
The unit is designed for a specific purpose and does it well and for the price is a great way to get into CCR Cave diving. There are a few items that I do not like w/ the build quality but overall it's well built. The Loop connections/DSV is one area that I think is underbuilt, the rest is a tank.
I was in the same boat about 2 years ago, wait for the SW2 or just say screw it and get the SW1 or Gemini. Gemini instructors were few and far between so I just went in on the SW1 and so far do not regret a single dive that I've done on it. It's like a lego set, lots of aftermarket parts and you can mix/match/upgrade over time. If the SW2 ever does come to market w/ the promises they've been making then you can upgrade the SW1 overtime as well into a SW2.
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