The one question I was always asked when I showed your demo plate was if there would be a design for doubles with a slot for a V-weight. Any chance of that?
I'm not sure if there would be an advantage to setting up a FP with doubles.
I found with doubles that it's the tanks that pretty much rest where they rest along the sides of your back. The plate is just there to provide something to attach straps to and to line up and hold the wing.
The Freedom Plate, with the way the top narrows down is difficult to set up on doubles, however I have done it. The bottom section, the way it curves around can be adjusted to sit on the tanks. I had to get a long 3/8" s/s carriage bolt and mount the top of the plate so it free floated out in mid air a ways so that the back strap of the plate would contact the back the way it needed to. And then, being that the plate sits flat on your back there is no way to use wing nuts or thumb wheels so I had to use domed carriage bolts and everything had to be bolted from the back. It required getting in there with a ratchet and extension with sockets to assemble/disassemble.
I can see the appeal though for doubles divers with the way the shoulder straps come out of a single point, and the plate following the curve of the back and finally when the straps leave the plate and go over the shoulders how there are no gaps and the transition is seamless. I have proven that this is a superior design characteristic for comfort and ergonomics.
And yeah, sure I could set one up on doubles but at what cost?
And designing and casting a hunk of lead to fit behind the plate all cozy is no problem either, but again, at what cost?
And then if I do that then those people will want some sort of STA for when they use the plate with singles so then I'm designing and fabricating an STA that will follow the shape of the plate and hold a single tank at the correct position. All doable but at what cost?
I ran into this with the vintage guys with their PRAAM's and PDAAM's- (the modified double hose with the LP ports you've probably heard about?).
I bent over backwards to try and build plates that would work for them and wound up going way off into left field for a group that might have a few dozen members. They wound up making a special aluminum flat plate with a big circular cutout at the top and it works. I'm glad for them.
That's something else I need to think about - market base.
Also, since most doubles divers are doing technical diving, and it seems (maybe I'm wrong about this) but it seems to me that most technical diving these days is done by GUE, DIR types, and since my plate is not DIR compliant that market is dead for me anyway.
I'm seeing divers that spend lots of money on some gear, but I found there is a wall that they hit when it comes to spending money on plates. Wings, can lights, scooters, cameras and video, dry suits, no problem... but plates - nope. It leaves me scratching my head because a plate lasts for life, the other stuff doesn't.
The biggest mistake people make is trying to compare the Freedom Plate to other conventional plates, and in doing their comparisons they look at price. But they are apples and oranges, there is no comparison.