Need a bit of advice with my sidemount project

[Dive-aholic]

Why am I limiting myself? There's plenty of shallower dives to keep me busy for years, no need to sit around doing nothing for hours on end

Deco is limiting, most of my diving is while on the move

Sure, but a 2 hour dive in JB, Twin, or Hole only gives you about 1/2 hour deco. I'm not a big fan of deco. 25 minutes in EN with 2 hours of deco isn't my idea of a great dive. It's a cool cave, but 2 hours is a lot of hang time! But there's beautiful stuff in the back end of the Mill Pond caves that's hardly ever seen. Not to mention some of the stuff on the Chipola.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

There's cool stuff on just about every river and creek in the area, and you don't have to go back far to see any of it. I'm not short on options, I'm shorter on free time, time I'd rather not be hanging around on deco. You'll never win me over with a 2 hour dive in JB - LOL.

 

[ucfdiver]

There's cool stuff on just about every river and creek in the area, and you don't have to go back far to see any of it. I'm not short on options, I'm shorter on free time, time I'd rather not be hanging around on deco. You'll never win me over with a 2 hour dive in JB - LOL.

You can get at least 3600ft in JB without deco anyways, probly EOL with a UV26 or magnus

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

..and be the 500th person there

 

[ucfdiver]

..and be the 500th person there

People still drive Route 66 for the scenery you know....:cool2:

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Doesn't make the scenery I see any less fantastic

 

[SangP]

Here's where we are at.

Me, and my wife, are planning to take intro to cave next year, with the goal of working up to full cave in the next couple of years. We are going to be doing this slowly and gaining experience.

We are in Missouri but will be doing all our cave stuff in northern Florida (Jackson county)

After talking to Edd & Dive-aholic (who we are going to be doing our cave with) both advised that since we plan to do sidemount from the start. We plan to "upgrade" our current cavern class with additional stuff that Rob teaches that we didn't get in our original cavern class, then do intro to cave, both in sidemount.

That means we have to start working on getting our sidemount gear together so we can learn what the heck we are doing.

Basically, we are using BP/W open water rigs right now, and I don't really want to mess with any of that, I want to leave that all as it is for now, so we are talking (mostly) two complete rigs.

We are going to have to get a sidemount rig (probably Nomads), reg set ups and all the associated rigging.

We are HOPING to be able to get down to Florida in December to do some training with Rob on setting up and using backmount, so we can work on it locally over the winter and next spring and become at least not a freakshow in backmount diving.

I have no idea about the secondary lift device for when we are down there, but when diving locally we can use our drysuits, so that will work for now.

Here's my question

We need 2 sidemount rigs, regs & guages, and the strapping. I have couple LP 12o steels already, but they are not set up cave-style (yoke, not set up for cave fills, etc) but those are easy to get fixed when down in cave country. She has AL80's, and AL63's yoke. By cave training time we will have her in steels of an appropriate size.

Primary lights by then are just not going to happen (since there are two of us, that's about $3K), we are going to have to use rentals, but Edd says that's not a problem.

Since all this stuff costs money, would you:

A) Just save money like crazy, drive down to Florida and have Edd fix us up...

B) Start buying gear one bit at a time. If this, would you start with regs or with the sidemount rigs?

I don't know of anybody around here who dives sidemount, and the local dive shops all kind of break out in hives when I start talking about this stuff.

Were you me, what would you do?

May I know why you would want to have 2 completely separate rigs?

I can easily reuse my OW regs but make some minor changes for the 15" LP bcd hose and 6" HP hose but I see not need to get a OW reg & SM reg set, just some extra SPGs, and the long hose setup if you didn't have it already.

As for wings, I got an oxycheq recon 2 extreme and a mach v 30 extreme wing which I could use for my single & doubles ow dives.

The only thing I did differently was with my sm harness. I designed my own stuff as I could not find another harness setup out there that was suited for the slots/spacing of the recon 2 wing yet be suited for back mount as well. I would also get the butt plate if I'm using heavy steels.

I did keep my bp/w for dedicated doubles back mount diving.

The other bits & pieces you would need are reels, arrows, hose retainers, cam bands and lots of d rings, bolt snaps and some bungees in different thickness 3/8 and 5/8.

I will take a couple of photos when I can.

SangP

 

[ucfdiver]

Doesn't make the scenery I see any less fantastic

I'll agree. The first 1000ft of JB is beat to crap anyways. Watching that Ginnie video Jeff and I made is so painful it's almost funny. JB is heading that direction the next few years I'm sure.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Yep, I agree, but atleast its white cave and harder to see most of the damage... :/

Still, there are SO many more caves out there, where you don't have to wade through a bunch of garbage passage to find something pristine.

 

[Dive-aholic]

You can get at least 3600ft in JB without deco anyways, probly EOL with a UV26 or magnus

3600 ft?? Really?? I hope you mean by scooter. I can make it to the EOL and back on my Magnus without deco but I'm not going to see a whole lot.

May I know why you would want to have 2 completely separate rigs?

I can easily reuse my OW regs but make some minor changes for the 15" LP bcd hose and 6" HP hose but I see not need to get a OW reg & SM reg set, just some extra SPGs, and the long hose setup if you didn't have it already.

Too much of a pain to make all those changes. I have sidemount regs, backmount regs, and single tank regs. They all serve their own purpose and I don't have to change hoses out every time I dive.