@wetb4igetinthewater, I appreciate your efforts to educate the people who may benefit from the discussion of proper distribution of weight. There are people who don't get it and double down on their not getting it.
Center of weight and center of buoyancy are physical concepts of diving. When the centers come together in a relaxed and neutral posture diving becomes effortless and magical.
If everyone chimed in that they have no problems achieving trim in the configuration I described, I'd be questioning my own sanity.
Before I took GUE fundies, I thought my trim was great. I learned the hard way that I was wrong. And while my trim was spot on as a result of the class, I always question due to degradation of skills from not diving (my daugher is now 3 and my priority) whether I'm in trim when I think I am. Of course, I break trim to look at stuff, but when I fin across the bottom, I expect myself to be horizontal. However, I haven't forgotten my lack of awareness prior to fundies (note: it shouldn't have required this course to get those skills/awareness, but in my case it did), so I always question my abilities. I will always have doubts that are best shed by video work (which I will be doing again soon).
I can watch all sorts of videos from DIR folks with BP/W configurations. Those videos are great for divers. But they are not helpful with inexpensive jacket style BCDs with a single cylinder strap and no trim pockets, shorty/thin full length wetsuit. The moral of the story (for me) is to at least take some bungee, maybe even weight pouches, to move any weight I need farther up if there is a chance I dive. When I travel with my BP, the weight is much farther up. Ideally I would have had my titanium plate and STA with me, as it would have been probably all that I needed on the dives I did with an AL11. But we were traveling in Cuba with minimal luggage.
Diving with bent knee at 90 degrees is a given. Diving with extended arms when I want to take pictures isn't going to work. I get that many photographers plant their fin tips in the bottom when taking pics. I really don't like this practice. I will sacrifice sharpness for staying off the bottom. Keeping a minimal amount of air in my lungs isn't ideal either. I want to breath normally. While I certainly can dive with less gas in my lungs moving my center of mass towards my head, I like breathing normally and not thinking about it.
Years ago, I was in the pool and had read about Pete talking on SB of just using the lungs to descend/ascend. When I dialed in my weight to be able to sink to the bottom and rise to the surface (about 10-12 feet deep, not that much), it was an evrika (eureka) moment on how extensive the use of one's lungs can be for depth control.
I wasn't expecting a bickerfest to ensue here as I didn't feel that this was something all that controversial nor that I was missing anything big. So far no one has offered anything I that I didn't try while down there. I do want to turn this into a blog post that I will submit to SDI. As I said in my opening post: trim doesn't get the focus it should in open water. I think just discussing center of mass and center of displacement would be beneficial to students for understanding weight distribution and achieving better trim. The other videos have good points to share, but steer people towards BP&W which the industry by in large doesn't use in open water courses.
I do know one dive center in La Paz, Mexico, that only provides BP&W. I had a chat about this with the owner, and he said most people don't know the difference, so there is no resistance to using one. I hope to have the same success when I open my dive center in Greece, however I think I will be guiding more than teaching. So we will see.
I don't think I'm crazy, but crazy people generally don't think they are either.
