ranger --> ebay --> BP/Wing

[Uncle Pug]

... you will love the bp/harness/wing...
Backplate & Wings ~ it is not just for techfast anymore

Try a bp/harness/wing and see how much air the Ranger is trapping... you will be surprised... and you will be able to drop even more weight off the belt.

btw... Rangers do well on ebay and often you loose no more than what a couple of rentals would have cost... after five years I sold mine for what amounted to a "loss" of only $20 per year!

Buying gear and trying it for a while and them re-selling it is fun and not a big expense if you buy right and sell right and it sounds like you bought the Ranger right!

~~~~~

Originally posted by Rockhound
A few weeks ago, I bought a new Ranger BC.

but my overall weighting requirements were less because it trapped less air.

But my Ranger was fairly inexpensive

 

[Fetch]

Thread thrift, but just a note:

If you force yourself to assemble your harness solo, working off a diagram, and keep fixing it until you get everything right, you will:

1) Beef up your arms by moving that much webbing around

2) REALLY understand how your harness works.

I'm glad I did, personally. I think I've got it down to about 5 minutes total from BP + webbing + hardware, to assembled harness.

As an aside, someone mentioned that adjusting a BP harness takes more time than a BC. While I won't deny that a BC can be adjusted REALLY quickly by the use of pull-tabs, the time difference isn't on an appreciable order. Maybe 60 seconds instead of 5. Just remember, you don't have to run a bunch of webbing when you're adjusting shoulder straps, just the 2 inches between lower shoulder strap and waist harness. And I'm a novice at it!

To address another point, comfort: I won't pretend that a SS BP with a nice webbing harness feels ALL that great on a long walk on the beach, cuz it doesn't. However, in the water there is absolutely no problem. FredT even dives his with a T-shirt, if I recall correctly.

Originally posted by Uncle Pug

I appreciate the way you presented this and your honesty with the new readers about your experience level, vacillation and frustration... and I for one will be interested to read your report after this weekend.

A few points if I may:
2) I don't know if you had proper help and instruction in setting up and using the bp... I wish that I could have been there to help you in person and truncate our collective exasperation... it is very easy to rig and adjust the harness when you know what you are doing... if you are just doing it for the first time looking at pictures on the web then it could be a pain... it is very easy to use a properly adjusted bp/wing if you get some help setting it and yourself up... it is very easy to get into and out of a bp/wing if you have someone show you a few little tips and the thing is set up right.

 

[GP]

Uncle Pug once bubbled...
... you will love the bp/harness/wing...

Try a bp/harness/wing and see how much air the Ranger is trapping... you will be surprised... and you will be able to drop even more weight off the belt.

~~~~~

Absolutely! Having had the chance last weekend to try a Halcyon SS Backplate with the 36lb. Pioneer wing I can say that my trim was much better than with my Ranger. In addition to the improved trim I found it much easier to dump air from the Halcyon as well. I've heard some people complain about the short bungeed inflator of the Halcyon but it was not a problem at all for me, it worked much better than the 10 foot long dangly Ranger inlator hose. I normally have slightly negative feet with the Ranger but with the Halcyon Rig I was able to hover in a horizontal postion as long as I wanted without having to to fin at all to stay horizontal. I will be saving my pennies for a Halcyon rig for next year and thus I will be doing the Ranger-->Ebay-->BP/Wing maneuver.

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

Lost Yooper once bubbled...
I dove with mine in Hawaii several times with nothing on and loved every minute of it. [/B]

Now's there's a visual I didn't need.

Marc

 

[leadweight]

I have been reading this forum for a while now, but only recently registered so that I could join in the fun. Sometimes it seems that this should be renamed the backplate forum as there are several prolific posters who think everything else is garbage.

All you have to say is I am thinking of buying a (Ranger, Transpac, Classic) and someone will say save your money and get a BP.

Recently, I rented a Halcyon SS BP with a 36# wing. This was my first try at back bouyancy. As far as trim and streamlining go it rocked. At the surface Ijust kicked myself onto my back and relaxed whild waiting for the boat. However, this rig fell short in the comfort department. The stiff straps just hurt my underarms no matter how much I tinkered with them. My fingers are now much stronger from adjusting the stiff webbing The plate itself was not a problem. I am a fairly experienced diver (over 200 dives) and did 12 dives with the BP including a salt water shore dive in Coz, 9 drift dives over the next 3 days and 2 freshwater dives on a cavern tour in Akumel. Wearing a 3 mil full suit over a 3 mil shorty I was overweighted with the SS BP and STA, but reasonably warm in the 74 degree clear-as-air water. Probably means I would need two BP's, one SS and one AL.

The guides all used backplates with doubles. With doubles the backplate looks very efficient as it gives a solid mounting base for the heavy doubles and allows the tanks to be as close to the divers back as possible. However, using a single tank on a BP seems like overkill, and the mounting is not all that close to the diver's back. (I was using the old style pioneer wing and a separate STA. My impression is that the new style wing with the build in STA is subjected to a lot of stress from the pressure of the cam bands on the STA rods, tank and center of the wing.)


I will be moving to a back bouyancy rig in the near future. Not a Ranger because I don't need 44# of lift. IMHO, the wing on the Ranger is too wide to be an optimum solution for singles. In order to get 6# on my back to improve trim I will use a pair of Halcyon trim pockets threaded on a cam band. The wing will be small at about 30# lift, modular, no integrated releasable weight pockets (yet) and the entire rig nearly as streamlined as a BP. You should be able to guess what it is, and I don't care what anyone around here thinks of it.

 

[Scuba446]

Hmm,
I can't - what IS it?

 

[detroit diver]

leadweight once bubbled...
........

Recently, I rented a Halcyon SS BP with a 36# wing. This was my first try at back bouyancy. As far as trim and streamlining go it rocked. At the surface Ijust kicked myself onto my back and relaxed whild waiting for the boat. However, this rig fell short in the comfort department. The stiff straps just hurt my underarms no matter how much I tinkered with them. My fingers are now much stronger from adjusting the stiff webbing ......

Just curious, why did the straps hurt your underarms? They shouldn't even be touching your arms. You sure you had it rigged correctly? The straps should come over your shoulders and down the front of your chest.

The stiff webbing does soften slightly after a number of dives. Certainly not as soft as the crotch strap material, but softer than brand new webbing.

 

[Uncle Pug]

detroit diver once bubbled...
The straps should come over your shoulders and down the front of your chest.

Hi Jack...

actually I think the straps come over the shoulders and immeadiately twist laterally to lay flat along your sides as they continue down angling back to the lower slots in the plate.

the straps are not in contact with the front of your chest and lay flat against your ribs at the sides.... however if they were adjusted too tight I can see how it is possible that where they twist to run down the sides they might dig into the front of the arm pit.... this is not the fault of the bp/harness design... it was just not adjusted properly.

 

[Scuba446]

UP,
Thats exactly how mine felt as well. Any looser, and dive partners would tell me that my tank was at 45◦ (degrees) on my back when I was submerged. Halcyon dealer said "You have the harness WAY too loose." So, I tighten it up. Didn't feel too tight, but I'd feel it 'pulling' on me while submerged, AND, on the surface waiting to get wet.

That was one of the reasons I had considered the OMS IQ harness if I was going to stay in a BP and wings...

 

[SM Diver]

Uncle Pug once bubbled...
Try a bp/harness/wing and see how much air the Ranger is trapping...

Would you mind elaborating on that? In your opinion, is this just a nuisence, or is it a safety issue (inability to dump trapped air when positive at depth)? Is it easier to dump air from a halcyon wing, and why?

These are issues I am presently looking at, but, to me, the Ranger looks like it has wings, just as the Halcyon with explorers.