New Diver - Advice on Purchasing Zeagle Express Tech BC

[Brewski]

Thats a good BCD, you'll enjoy it. now lets talk about diving...
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/norcal/328605-poll-summer-meet-greet-location.html

 

[Jon Nellis]

I just watched the video and the Zeagle ET looks interesting at first, and probably feels decent when new, but I suspect after a couple hundred dive, every thing will become significantly more flexible as the materials become worn, just like the Ranger LTD I had did. That was a nice BC for the first hundred or so dives, but put a heavy tank on it like a HP130 and it flopped all over the place. After about 200 dives, it flopped around with an Aluminum 80 on it and that's when I got rid of it. My favorite thing about the Zeagle BC was the Ripcord weight pouches, which I never had to use, but personally think is the best design available for dropping lead in an emergency (like one of my divers had last weekend that I wont go into here) I did notice on the video you can get just the ripcord pockets to put on a proper backplate. Apeks makes a decent set of weight pockets as well, I ended up making my own. Weight belt is another option, just not my first choice.

If you are using 30 lbs of lead, a 24 lb bladder is nowhere near enough lift after you add the 4 lbs for the full AL80 tank and 2 lbs for the BC itself and what ever you have attached (like a flashlight). If you took it off on the surface, it would make a nice crater when it hit the bottom. Should you be out on a boat and have a problem that requires the crew to remove your gear, you will likely lose it, as no one expects a BC not to be able to support its own weight when inflated.

You won't regret going with a backplate and wing (that is, until your luggage is 3 lbs over weight on your trip to Bonnaire and you have to decide which pairs of shoes to leave home)


edit: ok it looks like I type too slow. The ladyhawk is a better choice than the Zeagle with a 24lb cell, but borderline on the lift for an integrated BC with the amount of lead you are using. I bet you could drop a couple of pounds with a little more experience and be just fine though. Now go dive!


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[Bubbletrubble]

If you are using 30 lbs of lead, a 24 lb bladder is nowhere near enough lift after you add the 4 lbs for the full AL80 tank and 2 lbs for the BC itself and what ever you have attached (like a flashlight). If you took it off on the surface, it would make a nice crater when it hit the bottom. Should you be out on a boat and have a problem that requires the crew to remove your gear, you will likely lose it, as no one expects a BC not to be able to support its own weight when inflated.

@Jon Nellis: You are assuming that the 30 lbs. of lead are all attached to the BCD. It's certainly possible to be wearing some of that 30 lbs. on a separate weight belt or weight harness and make the 24 lb. lift wing work. My personal preference is to split the weight up like this with my BP/W setup. If more lift is required, Zeagle makes it easy to upgrade to a larger bladder.

 

[Brewski]

My wifes ladyhawk doesn't support itself with all the lead she stuffs into it for local diving. I'd recommend splitting between a belt and the BCD. Besides who wants to lift a BCD full of lead and don it?

 

[Anti-Hero]

I just watched the video and the Zeagle ET looks interesting at first, and probably feels decent when new, but I suspect after a couple hundred dive, every thing will become significantly more flexible as the materials become worn, just like the Ranger LTD I had did. That was a nice BC for the first hundred or so dives, but put a heavy tank on it like a HP130 and it flopped all over the place. After about 200 dives, it flopped around with an Aluminum 80 on it and that's when I got rid of it. My favorite thing about the Zeagle BC was the Ripcord weight pouches, which I never had to use, but personally think is the best design available for dropping lead in an emergency (like one of my divers had last weekend that I wont go into here) I did notice on the video you can get just the ripcord pockets to put on a proper backplate. Apeks makes a decent set of weight pockets as well, I ended up making my own. Weight belt is another option, just not my first choice.

If you are using 30 lbs of lead, a 24 lb bladder is nowhere near enough lift after you add the 4 lbs for the full AL80 tank and 2 lbs for the BC itself and what ever you have attached (like a flashlight). If you took it off on the surface, it would make a nice crater when it hit the bottom. Should you be out on a boat and have a problem that requires the crew to remove your gear, you will likely lose it, as no one expects a BC not to be able to support its own weight when inflated.

You won't regret going with a backplate and wing (that is, until your luggage is 3 lbs over weight on your trip to Bonnaire and you have to decide which pairs of shoes to leave home)


edit: ok it looks like I type too slow. The ladyhawk is a better choice than the Zeagle with a 24lb cell, but borderline on the lift for an integrated BC with the amount of lead you are using. I bet you could drop a couple of pounds with a little more experience and be just fine though. Now go dive!


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Will you go into the reason they had to ditch weight in the accidents / incidents forum? You can leave names out. It might help someone learn from the experience.

 

[Jon Nellis]

You are assuming that the 30 lbs. of lead are all attached to the BCD. It's certainly possible to be wearing some of that 30 lbs. on a separate weight belt or weight harness and make the 24 lb. lift wing work. My personal preference is to split the weight up like this with my BP/W setup.

There are a lot of compromises you could make with your gear configuration to make an undersized wing work, but why? 99% of the divers I get on the boat with integrated BCs have all their lead attached to their rig and I have had a few sink straight to the bottom when they use to have to do surface BC removal as a OW PADI skill. Very educational!

Having the integrated weight is a convenience that you pay a little more for in a good integrated BC or to add to a BP/W. To then go and use a weight belt, kinda makes the money spent on weight integration a waste, not to mention a hassle to put on under the BC and harder to ditch. More importantly, in an emergency, it is one more piece of gear that unfamiliar rescuers don't expect to find under an integrated BC.

If more lift is required, Zeagle makes it easy to upgrade to a larger bladder.

Why buy something you know you need to "upgrade" (i.e. spend more money on)? Buyers would be better off if Zeagle made the wing size an option at purchase. I have a feeling Zeagle will figure that out soon enough when the dealers complain that they cant sell there BCs they way come configured from the factory.


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[Bubbletrubble]

There are a lot of compromises you could make with your gear configuration to make an undersized wing work, but why? 99% of the divers I get on the boat with integrated BCs have all their lead attached to their rig and I have had a few sink straight to the bottom when they used to have to do surface BC removal as a OW PADI skill. Very educational!

You keep referring to an "undersized wing." Please disclose what specific criteria you are using to determine a properly sized wing.

The situation you describe involving the hapless divers doing the BC surface R&R probably had more to do with improper distribution of weight, overweighting and/or not inflating the BCD all the way...than a BCD bladder with not enough lift. All of the rental jacket BCDs I've seen have ample amounts of lift.

Having the integrated weight is a convenience that you pay a little more for in a good integrated BC or to add to a BP/W. To then go and use a weight belt, kinda makes the money spent on weight integration a waste, not to mention a hassle to put on under the BC and harder to ditch. More importantly, in an emergency, it is one more piece of gear that unfamiliar rescuers don't expect to find under an integrated BC.

You lost me on this. I disagree 100% with your assessment. Weight belts are a standard method for carrying lead weight. It is a very common practice to wear a weight belt with a conventional jacket BCD (weight-integrated or not) or a BP/W rig. I do not see this as a complicating issue in a rescue scenario.

Why buy something you know you need to "upgrade" (i.e. spend more money on)? Buyers would be better off if Zeagle made the wing size an option at purchase. I have a feeling Zeagle will figure that out soon enough when the dealers complain that they cant sell there BCs they way come configured from the factory.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. By "upgrade," I was referring to the practice of substituting a larger wing for the 24 lb. one with the customer paying the difference. AFAIK, Zeagle is usually pretty good about "customizing" the BCD at the time of initial purchase. For instance, if the customer wanted to buy the ZTE with an attached 35 lb. wing, I think that between the manufacturer and the retailer the request would be accommodated.

 

[Jon Nellis]

Will you go into the reason they had to ditch weight in the accidents / incidents forum? You can leave names out. It might help someone learn from the experience.

QuicK Hijack since the thread has pretty much served its purpose.

Inexperienced, but certified OW diver on a night dive with an instructor. Instructor takes him to the surface about 75' behind the boat with a light, but manageable current away from the boat. Diver has 500 psi in his tank and the instructor returns to the rest of the group underwater. After being on the surface for maybe a minute, inexperienced diver then decides to go back down and do a safety stop, at night and alone, where he runs out of air and struggles to get back to the surface screaming help, panicking, unable to orally inflate his BC and not thinking to dump his weight. Another diver from a different group that happened to be on the surface got to him after about a minute and got him stable before I got the boat off the anchor and over to them.

Monumentally poor decision by the diver to go back down for a safety stop alone at night. Panic prevented him from dumping his weights, which would have popped him up like a cork. Not much to dissect on that one.

End of Hijack


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[Jon Nellis]

You keep referring to an "undersized wing." Please disclose what specific criteria you are using to determine a properly sized wing.

If you have a 36 lbs of lead, tank and reg on a BC with 24 lbs of lift and the drysuit that you are relying on for 12 lbs of flotation floods, say from a torn seal, you do not have enough flotation to maintain control and surface in a controlled fashion. Or if you are using a wet suit and relying on it for 12 lbs of buoyancy, like in the above example, and accidentally find yourself at a much deeper depth than you had planned (say diving a wall), where the suit is now so compressed that it, in conjunction with your BC, no longer provides enough buoyancy to keep you from descending out of control. Those are the criteria most folks use to determine a properly sized BC

The situation you describe involving the hapless divers doing the BC surface R&R probably had more to do with improper distribution of weight, overweighting and/or not inflating the BCD all the way...than a BCD bladder with not enough lift. All of the rental jacket BCDs I've seen have ample amounts of lift.

This typically happens with smaller divers and rental gear. Many size small and extra small jacket BCs have less lift than the larger sizes and the rental wet suits require more lead to sink than what the BC is capable of lifting. How the weight is distributed on/in a BC will not cause it to sink and it's pretty obvious that when the relief valves are popping off and the BC is still sinking, that it lacks the flotation needed to lift the lead that the diver requires to descend. There was no "probably" or other speculation as to the cause and I address that issue with the dive shop the gear came from when it happens.

You lost me on this. I disagree 100% with your assessment. Weight belts are a standard method for carrying lead weight. It is a very common practice to wear a weight belt with a conventional jacket BCD (weight-integrated or not) or a BP/W rig. I do not see this as a complicating issue in a rescue scenario.

Weight belts are standard equipment, but wearing a weight belt under a cummerbund is not standard practice as it is not ditchable. Perform a rescue with divers hiding weight belts under their cummerbund in addition to their weight pouches and you will understand. The first thing I do with a diver in distress when getting them onto the boat is pull their weights and pop all the quick release buckles on their BC. At that point I expect them to float like a cork because see no other lead. I had one diver then startrd to sink on me because they had a weight belt hidden under their cummerbund. We caught the diver soon enough and got the weight off, but it was a complication we didn't need, not to mention there was no way for the diver to ditch the belt them self in an emergency since it was under their cummerbund. There wasn't enough weight to to completely sink the diver, but it was enough to sink their midsection, making it more difficult to remove.

Telling a new diver to just simply put some of their weight on a belt under their BC without telling them it needs to be readily ditchable (which isn't possible with many BCs) and then to use it with an undersized BC are two links in the chain of events leading to an accident report.

One of my favorite weight belt mistakes is watching divers put on a weight belt and then put on their BC with a crotch strap, not realizing that should the day ever come that they need to ditch their weight, all that will happen when they release that buckle is that the belt hang on their crotch strap out of sight between their legs. I point that out to them and they almost always reply "I've done that for years."

That is the problem with getting advice from a forum. Just because someone has gotten away with something for years, doesn't mean it is a good practice and should be recommended to others who don't know any better.



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[Anti-Hero]

One of my favorite weight belt mistakes is watching divers put on a weight belt and then put on their BC with a crotch strap, not realizing that should the day ever come that they need to ditch their weight, all that will happen when they release that buckle is that the belt hang on their crotch strap out of sight between their legs. I point that out to them and they almost always reply "I've done that for years."


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We're taught to put the crotch strap over the weight belt. It prevents accidental loss of weight. With proper weighting and a ballanced rig, a diver can swim their rig at the surface with full tanks and an empty BC, another skill taught in a proper class.

The story above about the new diver on the night dive has so many things wrong with it, its bordering on criminal.