Shopping for first scuba gear...

[redacted]

I was talking about the steel BP/W, because ballast. If we are not talking about a Stainless Back plate, then the conversation is just getting silly with parochialism. Remember there is a diver, asking a question, here in the Basic Scuba Forum. New divers tend to love their i3s, and see them as a great solution to lots of problems they themselves recognize as problems**. Let's, together,remember who posted the question and why, instead of trying to win a fight on the internet.

Yeah, there are certainly travel BP/W which are light, but those also do not provide the ballast that a full stainless backplate does. The Kydex travel plates are also feather light. But they are also everything wrong with BP/W (no pockets is the big one for most divers) and they do away with the one dominating reason to use a BP/W : ballast balanced over the lungs.

( that particular travel wing you listed is on odd choice to trumpet "greater range of choices" with. It works with exactly one wing, and no others (according the manufacturer) so there is no great range of choices to that one. The "real point", in this case, is moot.)

Install Linux, problem solved. (That there was a joke. BP/W is a solution in the same way Linux is a solution. It might be the solution for some tiny subset of questions)

** I am not buying an i3 for the reason I have. But it is the most loved BCD I see bought.

The point is, they are not just heavy steel plates. The plate material and weight is one of the choices available. Lift and shape are other important variables with a large array of choices.

Pockets are another choice. For most of what I carry on a dive, the D-rings are quite adequate. But, when I need pockets, I add them from an array of clip-on pockets. (I get most of mine at an army surplus store - much cheaper than those from a scuba manufacturer.) I guess you can even add releasable weight pockets if that is your thing.

BP/wing are a versatile, flexible option for a BCD and tend to be less expensive than top-of-the- line, brand name BCDs which have a rather rigid configuration (and shocking price tag). For the new diver who is undecided, my advise is to start with a used BCD. Perfectly adequate used BCDs can be had for well under $100 and will get you diving and learning. If you do a good job selecting it, you can even make a few bucks when you finally decide what is best for you. (Mine is still sitting in my closet and gets loaned out to new divers.)

BTW, my Oxycheq UL plate will work with a variety of wings, but I'm sure there are limits. Unfortunately, it is not easy to determine compatibility in advance. Manufacturers and dealers just do not put much effort into helping. My metal plates are homemade so I have gotten used to just figuring out a way to attach a wing to a plate. Sometimes it is just a matter of making a wing sandwich with a plate and a tank.

 

[tbone1004]

Beano, still waiting for you to prove me wrong re. the ballast and carrying less weight around. Very very VERY intrigued on how I'm wrong combined with the rest of the technical diving world. Insert jeopardy song

 

[scubadiver888]

Mike126 pointed out something everyone says in these threads... try the gear before you buy. I saw from your original post that you tried to find the regulators in rental so you could try them out before you buy them. For the Toronto area, I don't think you are going to find anyone renting BP/W. If you want to try it before you buy it, hook up with people in the area and see if there is someone who can let you try their equipment. The adjustments on a BP/W are VERY personal. So it won't be perfect for you. You'll actually have to find someone with a similar body to know their harness is adjusted to be close to what you need.

As for 'no pockets'. This was a serious concern for me. I have two colours, white and red. After a long dive I have no sunscreen protection. I spent enough time waiting for a boat to pick me up that floating on the surface is a prime time for me to get burnt. My solution is to carry a hat. The hat isn't huge but it is big enough I need a pocket to stick it in. The pocket needs to be about as big as a small mask pocket. That said, there are plenty of options for pockets. I have a DiveRite pocket on my BP/W and I have a pocket on my wetsuit.

The only downside I had with BP/W was adjusting the harness so it was most comfortable. With a jacket style BCD it was made to be easily adjusted. I could adjust, try it, adjust, try it, etc. in seconds. With BP/W there was adjusting the shoulder straps, where to put the d-rings, how many d-rings, etc. Once I get my rig set up it is great but I still have a bit of difficulty adjusting a new harness. I'm only on my second harness. So I don't have a lot of experience adjusting it. Finding a LDS to help you adjust it in the Toronto area is also difficult.

 

[tbone1004]

preach brother steve. I keep my Boonie/"Gilligan hat" wedged between my nomad and my back when I dive, but I always keep it with me. It lives inside of a hood actually when I'm cave diving or in warm water, but they get wedged between my back. Good safe keeping for them. Bit better than a pocket since I put useful things in there, but I use a diverite thigh pocket instead of shorts because in sidemount I like to be able to move them around. Shorts also get in the way of a P-valve in drysuits and I had mine ordered sans pockets for that reason

 

[Michael Guerrero]

I recommend post #4 in this thread.

 

[divad]

I'm looking for something that can travel reasonably well. While I am a beginner, I also don't want to be getting equipment that I'll quickly out-grow...

It's almost impossible to outgrow a backplate and wing.

 

[freename]

Wow... I am sooo glad this text is auto-saved or that accidental ctrl-w instead of shift-w would have ruined my morning!

First, thank you all for your responses. I'm really glad I ended up posting on here for advice. It's been fascinating hearing your discussion on nuances to the gear I may not have otherwise considered in time... after all, you don't really know what you don't know until you know you don't know it, right? Ha! That said, I now have even more follow-up comments/questions...

The BP/W option had been mentioned by the second dive shop as a more advanced option for when I was getting into multiple tanks / technical... I probably did myself a disservice by getting too quickly fixated on the back inflate travel bcd. From the sounds of it, such a bp/w setup could be disassembled so I'd be able to travel with just the wing and a lighter weight / plate to warmer climes, yes? Would it also be safe to assume that the wing can be packed into a relatively small size? After all, it was a well noted comment that there isn't the best or most scenic diving around Toronto... but that being said, and this being where I live, I think it prudent that I hone my skills while I can here before I go to see places that are more exciting! In my OW dives, I was... well, awful with buoyancy too - some of the problems I had struggled with coming clear when reading more about bp/w's - so that in particular is an issue I want to address. And I'll admit, the engineer in me quite enjoyed the (literal) free body diagrams of the divers' weight distribution under different bcds. Given all this, I think you may all have good points about moving to a bp/w... at the very least, it would give me one less thing to have to think about while trying to get my buoyancy down! Er... neutral. The pocket thing wasn't really an issue on my mind, and doesn't sound like something that I'll have trouble addressing if it ever becomes one... and the weight isn't a huge issue either, since I am a pretty big guy myself.

The other big question I'd have with the bp/w bcds is just with respect to dumping the air... I know when we were training with the jacket style in the pools, they were a pain to get empty because you'd have to roll awkwardly to get the hose / shoulder to be the highest part of the jacket. The back style seemed very similar, though (and this may be an incorrect assumption on my part) I assumed the bungees on the knighthawk would have helped somewhat by compressing the bladder. Is this a common issue with all bcds, or something I can figure out a macgyver'd solution to, or something that I just need to learn to deal with?

Lastly on the subject of bcds... even though the I3 isn't a model I'm considering at this point, I must ask (because I'm curious)... if the inflation/deflation is controlled by that lever on your side, how do you do a manual inflate if you run out of air? I mean, I can picture it if you've added (as some said people do) an air2 to it, but in its basic form? Is that just a rare-enough situation that they decided it isn't an issue?

On the subject of regs, the reason I got it into my head that these should be one of my early purchases was because of several less-than-pleasant experiences I had with the regs they gave us in our pool - and even OW - dives... from awful breathability to free flows to just not having clips to attach the octo to me... and a conversation I had with one of my coworkers who is a very experienced diver (I'm almost willing to bet he started diving before I was born!) where he mentioned an experience he had with a set of rental regs going on him and nearly dying as a result. Since these largely determine how comfortable I am at depth and my life really depends on them, they weren't something I wanted to cheap out on. Hence my slow migration from the basic kit offered by the shop I trained at to the mares suggested by the second to the apeks being pushed by the third. I want good quality here, but because I am new and I want something versatile that can be fixed by any dive shop I may wander into (if it were to fail while on vacation, for instance) I was looking at mainstream name brands. Post #4, it was suggested I look at a HOG D1. The price sounds right (especially considering some poorly-timed and unfortunately expensive repairs that I now need to have made to my car... ugh...) and it sounds like I could potentially learn to do some repairs to them myself (which could help with the vacation failures, I suppose) but... how widely known is this brand? This could just be my inexperience as well, but I hadn't encountered that name before. Am I going to have trouble getting them serviced locally - wherever that local may be? The other question is just how well do they perform in cold weather? While personally I think Toronto is still "warm", the last thing I'd want is for my reg to freeze up on me. The guy pitching the apeks said he had used them on dives in the arctic without problems, that they had better breathability than the aqua lungs... basically, two things that gave me more comfort on their suitability. It also didn't hurt that he was selling them with a "parts for life" offer. Who is edge / HOG... how comfortable can I be in their reliability / availability / maintainability / safety?

Regarding the first stage, I don't think any of the dive shops I went to were very clear on what they were including in the package. I suppose I just assumed it was bundled with the second stage. Again this goes to show how I can do all the research I want but if I'm not asking the right questions I won't get the right answers!

With the console, when I said "downgrade" I meant price not practicality - though I did quite enjoy the nickname 'crab-basher' and can see a 3 gauge coming in handy if I should get hungry... But no, I would definitely prefer just the SPG with a wrist computer and compass setup. It just seems cleaner and more accessible that way.

Lastly, the wet / dry suit. To be honest, before I started the course I was thinking that it would be my very first purchase. It was only when I had to deal with crappy regs and an unpleasant jacket bcd that I started thinking of refocusing on that gear instead. Maybe the best route is to just go all out and get *all* the gear right off the bat. I'll have to start looking into the nuances here before I can come back with yet more questions for you all though!

 

[scubastingray]

BP/Ws are touted as the more "technical" setup, and certainly are preferred over jackets by tech divers, however saying they are only for tech divers is erroneous. They are a streamlined setup, and if you think you'd prefer it go that route, and don't let the shop's preconceptions be your limiting factor. Depending on your wing, yes they can pack down quite well and travel efficiently. The buoyancy/lb is also pretty awesome.

I think that not everyone is as comfortable in it though, and that's fine by me. Try to test a rig before you commit to it, lest you find you really prefer the jacket style. One thing I did for my singles setup is get a back inflate, the litehawk. Backinflates, and the one I got in particular, are often built and designed like BP/Ws. The only real difference is at this point the plastic backplate instead of AL or Steel, and a less simple harness.

As far as venting, most (all?) wings have a dump of some sort. I've got a butt dump on my back inflate bc, and my doubles wing. You just sort of lean forward a bit in the water and pull the cord to vent air.

 

[kr2y5]

I could not fathom how BP/W could possibly be "comfortable" until I actually tried it... buying a jacked BCD was a mistake, and it was even worse for my wife, who had to go over a few to find one that fits properly. I wish that I had gone with a Hogarthian/DIR setup since dive #1. I actually enjoy the feeling of a bare backplate sitting on my back.

 

[divad]

BP/W is the elegant solution.