The history of the plate.
Back in 2001-02 (something like that), I used to read diver.net, and all the DIR wars were going on. There was no SB at that time that I knew about. They used to go on and on about BP/W endlessly. Nobody in the recreational world ever heard of such a thing since everyone just went to their LDS and we just used whatever they sold us. My interest was finally piqued, so I pulled out a paper catalog I had from Leisure Pro and ordered an OMS plate with a 35 lb wing and a STA. There were no single tank wings at the time, the very few people who used BP/W then just used doubles wings and let them taco around the tank. I dove this for a probably a year, then one day realized there had to be a better way. A friend of mine had an old plastic back pack laying around in his garage and I remembered those things. They actually worked really well but there was no way at the time to attach any sort of BC system so the concept gave way to the ready made STAB jacket and the backpack became obsolete with just a few years. A shame really. Anyway, my buddy gave me the backpack and told me to go have fun with it.
One day I decided to hang the OMS plate on my back with out the wing on so I could see it and study what was wrong with it while looking in the mirror sideways. I realized the plate was flat and wide, and it rested on the inverted slope of my back and then teeter tottered on my shoulder blades as I tried to pull it up further on my back to straighten it out. I also noticed that it had a channel that stuck up really high and combined with the STA moved the tank so far away from my body it was rediculous. I tried to modify the OMS plate to make it better but realized the design was so flawed that it was really a lost cause to make it into an ideal singles plate. I was kind of pissed that I had spent the money on the STA and the 35 lb wing, but realized it wasn't a total loss because I was tech diving also at the time and I used it for doubles.
After studying the doubles plate in the mirror, I put on my freebie plastic backpack to see what it looked like in the mirror sideways and the difference was uncomparable as far as where it placed the tank, and more importantly the correct angle it placed the tank. This was due to the bottom of the plastic backpack being thicker at the bottom which kicked the bottom of the tank out making it line up better with the verticle axis of the body. Not only that but the way those packs narrowed down as they went up allowing the pack to rest down in the valley in between my shoulder blades which also got the tank closer to my back and additionally helped to straighten the tank out and get in lined up correctly.
This was the primer, the brainchild, for what was to become the modern Freedom Plate.
My idea was to mimick the same concept as the backpack, but to modernize the features so it could be used with modern wings and use thick stainless since the new in-vogue fashion was to have added ballast.
The very first plate was made out of aluminum, very crude. I had it fabbed up in a couple hours. All it was for was to see if my idea would work. It worked.
The next step was to make the same plate out of stainless and dive it a bunch, which I did. About that time the new narrower single tank wings were coming out. I was doing a lot of reading and gleaned that Halcyon wings were having problems with their new single tank Pioneer wings, they were literally coming apart at the seams. Something to do with bad inner urethane coating or not fused correctly. At that time, many single tank wings were a single walled shell, there was no inner bladder, so air could seep out of the edge seams. The new darling on the block was Oxycheq. I ordered one of their Razor wings and had the hottest new single tank wing around, the latest thing according to internet lore.
Every place I went with that rig people would come up and ask about it. It drew a lot of attention. It was a funny looking thing compared to other rigs being used. All my friends started wanting to try it, and after they tried it they wanted one.
I went down to Socal on a two day charter boat trip with it and I was mobbed. That's when I decided to start a limited production run just to see if I could get something going, and also to get people to stop harrassing me for one. The very first model was a tall skinny thing with very wide flaring sides that curved around your waist. There was no rail, all it had was a little stand off bracket welded to the bottom that had a little curved tank cradle. The wing got sandwiched in between the plate and tank and there was a lot of play between all the components. It required a lot of tugging and adjusting to get everythig lined up just right. At the top of the plate there was no rail or bracket of any kind. The tank rested right on the top portion of the plate where the top slots were. The only thing that was in between the tank and your back was an 1/8" of stainless. This is the model that most of the Socal people have including Max Bottomtime and Merry, and many others...and many that are not on this board.
There were about 109 of the first model, including the first 9 handmade prototypes.
On the first model fat people complained that the waist curves squezeed in on them, and skinny people complained that there was too much slop on the waist and the curve wasn't tight enough.
At the same time, Oxycheq came out with the Mach V wing and abandoned the older signature series and Razor wings. so the slots did not line up anymore with version one.
Version II cured all this. It was narrower at the base, the slots were narrower (closer together) and longer vertically. This plate was basically designed around the Oxycheq Mach V since it was the leading single tank wing at the time. I also made some further adjustments to the geometry to allow for other brands of wing to be used also.
There were many slight variations with version 2. There was the micro, which was a very narrow plate that was designed as a stainless travel plate. All early version II plates had a welded on rail that consisted of a 2" channel that was ripped out of a piece of 1/8" x 2" square tube. The cut edges is where the tank rested on. I got the idea to put fuel line over these edges to keep the tanks from getting scarred up. At that time all the wings always went over the rail bars so I wasn't too worried about most people. It was the no BC divers that concerned me with scratching up tanks.
The later version II was the same perimiter shape as the early II but it had a removable channel rail. This is the one that Akimbo has.
Then a few years later came the Contour, which was a major breakthrough and upgrade.
Something about the earlier FP's were just bothering me about the 2" channel I was using. I wasn't able to bend and shape the back strap of the plate enough to my liking to make it REALLY fit like I thought it should. I also wanted to add a little more weight because 3 lbs and some change wasn't really enough. If I went wider then I'd feel the edges of the plate begin to bite my shoulder blades a little. So one day goofing around in my shop I thought it would be cool to roll all the edges of the plate to really make it sink in and feel no edges biting in anywhere. So I got out my special metal working hammers and started working a piece of stainless on my anvil and the contour was born.
A hell of a lot of work and I had to customize my anvil, but well worth it.
Version III was the first Contour. Instead of a piece of tapered half channel, I brainstormed using round rail bars. The new shape of the Contour was so radically shaped from the past models that some sort of special way to attach a tank was needed. I thought of 5/16" rods since each and every plate was slightly different. Using rods allowed me to custom build the tank mounting structure to each plate according to it's unique individual shape. All version III Contours had welded on rail bars and the wing got sandwiched in between the rail bars and the tank. The one bonus that I discovered with rail bars instead of a U shaped channel was that if there were wings that the slots did not line up with the slots in the plate, the cam bands could simply go under the rail bars and skip running them through the plate. Jim Lapenta has a version 3 Contour.
There were also two sizes with the Contours, a small and standard. This was the first time a few different sizes were offered.
The big complaint was that wings with no slots could not be used like Halcyon wings.
Five years later the newest Contour IV comes out, the 400 series.
All new, redesigned, newer shape, three different sizes, removable rail, 3/8" bars stock instead of 5/16".
Also fully Contoured. The most versatile plate to date.
Also the heaviest plate to date, which is a good thing.
And now Halcyon wings can be used for the two people that complained.
Still in the final small detail tweeking stage, this looks like the model that will be here for a while.
And now there are all sorts of new single tank wings out there to choose from, I'm amazed!
A far cry from when all we had was double tank wings.
So far there has been a little over three hundred plates sold world wide since 2005.
If you have one, you are in a very small exclusive group of people. I can only make so many of these in a limited amount of time.
And for those wondering, all Freedom Plates from the beginning had a bracket or rail of some sort to kick out the bottom of the tank for the proper offset.
The next thing will be Aluminum plates that are exactly the same shape and thickness as the stainless version.
My large aluminum prototype only weighs 2 lbs!
Paired with the VDH wing and harness it's probably not more that 5 or 6 lbs total dry weight for the whole rig.
And the beauty of it is, there is no compromise with fit, comfort, or features.
All my tanks as well as the shop tanks I use when I'm working with a class are all galvanized steel.
