Travel gear?

[fisheater]

Do NOT get an integrated inflator/octo for California diving.

I had such a system and when I had an actual need to share air with my buddy, we could only go up, right into the middle of large giant kelp bed. It took a very long time and much needless effort to do the kelp crawl to our boat. With an octo on a long hose, I could have shared air and we could have swam to the boat, underwater, single file and been back in a minute.

That was the last time I do with that setup. I switched over to a BP/W and a seven foot hose setup.

 

[GF99/99]

Hi new here. Was thinking of getting back into diving and picking up some new gear specifically for travel and local on the California coast. Got a few questions..

1. Is there any reason to get an octopus style regulator? It seems the ScubaPro Lighthawk with the Air2 chest style regulator would be more compact (and that's actually the style I was originally trained on). Would this really be more compact all packed up (I haven't actually seen it in person)? Any reason this setup wouldn't be good for the California coast or packing and travel? Seems like the octopus style is much more popular??

2. I'm not stuck on any one brand or model. But I do spend 6 months abroad every year(work 6 week on/off rotation). Time is split between SE Asia, Philippines and Latin America. As for parts, servicing, problems are there any manufactures you would lean toward or avoid based on parts/service availability? Simply from a maintenance standpoint what would be the most easily maintained brands in Asia and Latin America? For example I have one local shop, a Sherwood dealer but I'm just not sure about their international dealer network? And Cressi?

3. Is there any reason to avoid these travel style BCD's? They all appear to be a little more of a lighter backplate style. Am I crazy for looking at this type of gear when I could just get high quality standard non travel BDC for California and use rental gear abroad (basically offered at no additional charge everywhere I will be diving).


Thanks

I to spend about 6 months out of the year traveling all over the world average about 50-70 flights a year and part time live in Indonesia. I will tell you from my experiences traveling with diving gear and owning tons of diving gear.

1. No these are not any more compact, just stick with a regular alternate second stage. if you take the hoses off and just transport your first stage and second stages with the hoses coiled up they take up almost now room.

2. In my experiences traveling I have rarely seen a place where you can not get Scuba Pro or AL/Apeks parts around the world. With the exception to the US for some reason AL/Apeks parts are a little more difficult to get ahold of (stricter regulations by AL/Apeks dealers) if you do not "know some". Personally I use Apeks (have about a dozen Apeks regs) and have never had a problem getting part and I go to a lot of remote areas. Also I have fond Apeks regs to be super easy to service. I can rebuild a first stage in about 10min and only need about 4 small basic tools.
But regulators are regulators, this is more of a personal preference thing its like Chevy or Ford cant really tell you what is better. I would not get hung up on this too much because you can always just stock up on parts as well and just keep a couple service kits in your bag since they take up not space. For example if you went with Deep 6 regs obviously you would never find any of these in Asia but if you just kept a full service kit with you at all time this should cover any issue you have. This is what most of us with rebreather have to do, you just end up carting around a small box of spares.

3. I find back plate and wings to be the best to travel with, I have an aluminum backplate, and 18# Argonaut wing Store | Vintage Double Hose I take the wing off and roll my 1 and second stages up in it and this is only about the size of a shoe box, the back plate you just lay flat in your bag and takes up almost no room.