I think this is really important if your SMB can stay rigid while wet. I had a saeko 6' SMB which I thought was perfect as it wasn't fat and had less than 20lbs of lift so was easy to shoot from the shallows. But i discovered that while it was easy to wave around while dry, once wet, it wasn't strong enough to stay rigid and would flop over. I had to choke up almost 2 feet, meaning on the surface, the 6' SMB was about as useful as my halcyon 3 footer. I now have a 6' Halcyon that stays rigid, even when wet. Curious to see how the 10foot OMS stands up.
I bought this.
And it's almost impossible for the fully inflated beast to stand upright at the surface.
There was an article, magazine article specifically, about the effectiveness of various signaling devices that can grab attention of a boat crew. Dive alert won since it can be heard 1.5 miles away. Via extrapolation, I thought, a 16' SMB will make me visible 2-2.5 miles away.
Size wise, for those who uses a backplate/wing setup, folding it according to the size of the backplate, fits nicely behind your back, and I was using the small size Halcyon backplate.
I tested the beast out in a 5 meter pool while diving double aluminum 80 ft. I fully inflate the SMB and deflate my BCD, with remaining air 140 bar (aka, still negatively buoyant), and still I can't have the beast stand upright. Mind you that my setup is almost equivalent to 20kg.
To make it stand upright at its highest point, that is little of the SMB is submerged, the sausage needs to have some sort of support at its sides; or inflate it to high pressure, stiff enough that the sausage can stand upright on its own. Both are impossible to achieve I'd say. That beast is rated to have 48kg of lift capacity, so how much weight will be needed just to have it upright? I don't know, but definitely a lot of weight!
For it to be humanly able to make it upright, I'm guessing probably 2 meters above the water surface is the sweet spot. There goes my $. Until I came across Rescue Streamer, and then I struck me that this beast can expand my visibility horizontally, useful for helicopter search!
So, size does matter, but there's a limit to it. I'd say 2 meter is best, perhaps stretch it to even 2.5 or even 9' (2.7m) is still doable.
Hope that helps.
Henry
PS. I've yet to ask OMS, what's the actual use of a 16' DSMB.
