Opinions on new divers with technical setups?

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Your octo goes on a short hose and hangs from a necklace just below your chin.
Yeah that’s a big benefit of why I want to go full hogarthian this early. In that quote I was talking about my regular setup on rental regs. I’ll just route the octo through a D-ring or even loop and tuck it into my waist currently.

I love the idea of twin second-stages and primary donate. It just makes more sense logistically to my monkey brain.
 
Yeah that’s a big benefit of why I want to go full hogarthian this early. In that quote I was talking about my regular setup on rental regs. I’ll just route the octo through a D-ring or even loop and tuck it into my waist currently.

I love the idea of twin second-stages and primary donate. It just makes more sense logistically to my monkey brain.
There is nothing stopping you having a reg on a standard length hose on a necklace. There is nothing stopping you having whatever length yellow octopus you like, although storage gets to be a hassle and putting it away after practice can be impossible.

The key thing is to get training in use. There is a whole system, use it, don’t just pick on the stuff you can see and copy it. Basically, do not learn to dive on the internet.

Personally I think twice about using a primary donate system with random buddies. The last time I was using OC kit travelling I put a conventional 40 inch octopus back on. If you are going to use primary donate then use a proper Setup with a properly routed hog loop.

Either the claims about people stealing a primary are urban myths or there are some really badly prepared divers in certain parts of the world.

“Technical” diving is not about kit configurations, it is about having a proper plan. If you want to advance then learn how plan dives so they are safe, or at least the risks are controlled. Learn how to be sure you have enough gas for the dive. Dive with people who know that too.

Which particular kit is more important sometimes. A 40lb wing with a single is nastier than a BCD. An 18lb wing is lovely if you don’t need a suit etc etc
 
Your diving is your best training, here is your course


Use your money wisely grasshopper on gear and diving
 
Also yeah, my main reasoning for wanting a longer hose is to put distance between me and a panicked diver. Especially being early in my diving it makes more sense to give people space if there is the out of air emergency to contend with. Just trying to hedge my own bets while maintaining the responsibility as a basic OW buddy

While I haven't done a rescue course, I think I would want control over a panicked divers buoyancy until they calm down.
I can keep someone from descending if they're a little negative but if they are at all positive or can inflate then there's no stopping that runaway train.
Now if they're calm, then the long hose allows for freedom of movement for both.
I too went a techreational route with SM after 25 dives. No regrets!

Cheers!
 
"Technical Diving" is generally considered to be when diving outside "recreational" limits, which really boils down to diving when you can't just bolt to the surface, such as in an overhead or with significant decompression obligation, where you need specialist "technical" kit and skills such as stage bottles, specialist gasses and oxygen.

Diving with a longhose and backplate+wing (BP+W) is quite mainstream nowadays, so not considered specialist technical equipment, thus isn't technical diving per se.

The benefits of diving with a longhose BP+W are many, as are the drawbacks. Benefits include:
  • A wing promotes far better trim; being flat in the water and not the proverbial seahorse. Whilst it's possible to dive flat in a jacket BCD, the buoyancy in a jacket is wrapped around you, rather than around your tank where the wing floats up to 'taco' around the tank so the centre of buoyancy is a bit higher.
  • A doughnut wing, as opposed to a horseshoe style wing, will make dumping gas easier from the hip dump. Jacket BCDs and horseshoe wings frequently require the diver to roll from side to side or come out of trim to move the buoyancy gas from side to side. So doughnuts mean you keep in better trim.
  • The crotch strap keeps everything in place, so more consistent trim. This is important on the surface where everything's kept in place.
  • There's no removable weights which tends to encourage you to dive with correct weighting which is critical for optimising your gas consumption. Whilst people on a BCD should do this, they frequently don't.
  • The backplate harness fits better because it's infinitely adjustable to your shape, not some designer's perfect ideal of the average body. A harness fits everyone from petite to enormous with D-rings in the correct places.
  • There's no dangly flubber -- all that total rubbish floating around you with straps, clips and 'stuff' here there and everywhere. The harness is reduced down to the 3 D-rings of minimalist zen-like calm. No 'crap' dangling off of you like hoses, SPGs, unnecessary retractors.
  • In summary, if you look cool in the water, you probably are cool, calm and collected in the water.
Longhose benefits:
  • You dive with your backup kept in a single place, under your neck. Take the longhose out of your mouth and simply scoop up the backup reg under your chin and pop it into your mouth. Breathe. It's so simple.
  • Any form of OOG (Out Of Gas) incident is trivially easy to handle: you grab the reg from your mouth and thrust it into the face of the person who needs it, you'd have scooped up your backup and be breathing with it almost before they are breathing from your guaranteed to be WORKING regulator. Everybody lives. The utter mess that is a jacket BCD and some clipped off, bungeed, folded, shoved in a pocket, dangling off and dragging in the silt, never tested in the water "octopus" regulator takes an age to find and will probably result in the OOG diver simply grabbing your regulator -- you're both now in trouble.
  • That jacket-BCD crazy sweeping back to find a regulator floating behind you isn't necessary with a longhose. You've one regulator that's either in your mouth or clipped off on the RH D-ring. The other regulator's on a bungee below your chin.
  • When 'donating' you can get out of the face of the person you're helping. You can both be "in trim" as you ascend, it's calmer, simpler and a lot easier.
  • Only when you're using an umbilical battery torch (battery on your waist, torch on a Goodman handle in your left hand) does donating get slightly more complicated as you need to move your torch cable under your longhose. It's simple once you're shown and practice.
  • SPG's always in the right place: left hand hip D-ring.
  • You will test your backup regulator on every dive; it's so easy to swap to your backup, take a breath or three and swap back.
  • All of these skills are identical when you move to a twinset (for extended range and redundancy). Learn once.
Longhose with backplate and wing drawbacks:
  • None.
Jacket BCD drawbacks:
  • They don't fit
  • They ride up because there's no crotch strap
  • Clip-tastic, strap-tastic dangly 'stuff' all over the place
  • D-rings in the wrong place -- one size fits nobody
  • Octopus placement is awful
  • Buoyancy in the wrong place
  • Removable weights -- these fall out and break
Jacket BCD benefits:
  • None

So do go for a Longhose, Harness, Backplate and a doughnut Wing.

It is highly recommended to get someone to show you how to configure it and how to do the longhose donate.
 
This the rig I settled with after trying the long hose for a few years. No penetration just open water rec diving.
40" Primary, 22" octo
I found this set up to be perfect for my style of diving.

aow-reg-pkg-hose-routing_pk5300-ow-jpg.530973.jpg
 
6’3 here, looking at a 60 inch primary

I need a dive with my buddy to let the webbing stretch and re adjust my new setup for BP/W anyway, so it’s a great chance for us to practice donate, mask removal, buoyancy, etc.

I'm over a foot shorter than you guys and find that my 7 foot hose is just long enough to stay put nicely with a single tank without a can light or hose retainer.

BTW, regarding recommending training and practice with a long hose, I guess I'm thinking of it to a proficiency acceptable by GUE standards, as well as for safety. This would include with task loading, like an air share during a graduated ascent and/or SMB deployment or even just deploying while using a can light on a Goodman handle.

Since you mentioned that you might be interested in Fundies, it's easier to learn it once rather than re-learn it a different way later. If you know any GUE divers in your area, I'm sure they would be happy to mentor you. There are also FB groups like FLUE (Florida Underwater Explorers), the general GUE page, and maybe others in your area.
 
"Technical Diving" is generally considered to be when diving outside "recreational" limits, which really boils down to diving when you can't just bolt to the surface, such as in an overhead or with significant decompression obligation, where you need specialist "technical" kit and skills such as stage bottles, specialist gasses and oxygen.

Diving with a longhose and backplate+wing (BP+W) is quite mainstream nowadays, so not considered specialist technical equipment, thus isn't technical diving per se.

The benefits of diving with a longhose BP+W are many, as are the drawbacks. Benefits include:
  • A wing promotes far better trim; being flat in the water and not the proverbial seahorse. Whilst it's possible to dive flat in a jacket BCD, the buoyancy in a jacket is wrapped around you, rather than around your tank where the wing floats up to 'taco' around the tank so the centre of buoyancy is a bit higher.
  • A doughnut wing, as opposed to a horseshoe style wing, will make dumping gas easier from the hip dump. Jacket BCDs and horseshoe wings frequently require the diver to roll from side to side or come out of trim to move the buoyancy gas from side to side. So doughnuts mean you keep in better trim.
  • The crotch strap keeps everything in place, so more consistent trim. This is important on the surface where everything's kept in place.
  • There's no removable weights which tends to encourage you to dive with correct weighting which is critical for optimising your gas consumption. Whilst people on a BCD should do this, they frequently don't.
  • The backplate harness fits better because it's infinitely adjustable to your shape, not some designer's perfect ideal of the average body. A harness fits everyone from petite to enormous with D-rings in the correct places.
  • There's no dangly flubber -- all that total rubbish floating around you with straps, clips and 'stuff' here there and everywhere. The harness is reduced down to the 3 D-rings of minimalist zen-like calm. No 'crap' dangling off of you like hoses, SPGs, unnecessary retractors.
  • In summary, if you look cool in the water, you probably are cool, calm and collected in the water.
Longhose benefits:
  • You dive with your backup kept in a single place, under your neck. Take the longhose out of your mouth and simply scoop up the backup reg under your chin and pop it into your mouth. Breathe. It's so simple.
  • Any form of OOG (Out Of Gas) incident is trivially easy to handle: you grab the reg from your mouth and thrust it into the face of the person who needs it, you'd have scooped up your backup and be breathing with it almost before they are breathing from your guaranteed to be WORKING regulator. Everybody lives. The utter mess that is a jacket BCD and some clipped off, bungeed, folded, shoved in a pocket, dangling off and dragging in the silt, never tested in the water "octopus" regulator takes an age to find and will probably result in the OOG diver simply grabbing your regulator -- you're both now in trouble.
  • That jacket-BCD crazy sweeping back to find a regulator floating behind you isn't necessary with a longhose. You've one regulator that's either in your mouth or clipped off on the RH D-ring. The other regulator's on a bungee below your chin.
  • When 'donating' you can get out of the face of the person you're helping. You can both be "in trim" as you ascend, it's calmer, simpler and a lot easier.
  • Only when you're using an umbilical battery torch (battery on your waist, torch on a Goodman handle in your left hand) does donating get slightly more complicated as you need to move your torch cable under your longhose. It's simple once you're shown and practice.
  • SPG's always in the right place: left hand hip D-ring.
  • You will test your backup regulator on every dive; it's so easy to swap to your backup, take a breath or three and swap back.
  • All of these skills are identical when you move to a twinset (for extended range and redundancy). Learn once.
Longhose with backplate and wing drawbacks:
  • None.
Jacket BCD drawbacks:
  • They don't fit
  • They ride up because there's no crotch strap
  • Clip-tastic, strap-tastic dangly 'stuff' all over the place
  • D-rings in the wrong place -- one size fits nobody
  • Octopus placement is awful
  • Buoyancy in the wrong place
  • Removable weights -- these fall out and break
Jacket BCD benefits:
  • None

So do go for a Longhose, Harness, Backplate and a doughnut Wing.

It is highly recommended to get someone to show you how to configure it and how to do the longhose donate.

I could refute half of this but I'll only say, why would you believe that BCD divers don't know where their octo is and don't check it and also make sure that it's not dragging in the silt?

Other than that, it matters not because you dive the way you want to dive and our OP wants to do similarly BUT don't assume that the rest of us don't know where our gear is and not properly weighted, etc. That is all.
 
I could refute half of this but I'll only say, why would you believe that BCD divers don't know where their octo is and don't check it and also make sure that it's not dragging in the silt?

Other than that, it matters not because you dive the way you want to dive and our OP wants to do similarly BUT don't assume that the rest of us don't know where our gear is and not properly weighted, etc. That is all.

Because I've dived and watched them. Whilst you may not do this, plenty of other novices have.

When have you *ever* seen a BP/Wing person dragging a longhose in the dirt?
 
Because I've dived and watched them. Whilst you may not do this, plenty of other novices have.

When have you *ever* seen a BP/Wing person dragging a longhose in the dirt?

True, haven't seen that but have seen some other hysterical stuff. Let's just leave it there. I won't side track this thread further. The OP has made his choice clear and I have no problem with that but he needn't assume too, the "attitude".
 
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