Vintage diver pros and cons? Why do it?

[justleesa]

I dive w/o a bcd, everything is done over the lungs....some people wear a horse collar and yes, you need less weight

 

[Walter]

It depends. If you are weighted correctly and if you use a neutrally buoyant BC (no padding that doesn't trap air), your weighting will stay almost the same with or without the BC. I say almost, because you'll need to add about 2 lbs for the double hose that is full of ambient air. If your BC is positively buoyant, you'll need to shed weight. If you use a SS BP, you'll likely have to add lead. If you aren't properly weighted, you need to master that before considering vintage.

Vintage gives you freedom you haven't even imagined.

 

[duckbill]

Since BC's are not used with vintage setups, are there any problems when diving without BC? What about weights? Do you need a lot less lead with vintage?

Thanks

To clear this up, you CAN dive with a BC and still be vintage. They did it all the time in the '60s. The BC was the horsecollar.

As said before, if you use the BC to compensate for over-weighting, then "yes", you will need less weight. Walter got pretty specific and said it right. The BC is intended as a 1)Buoyancy COMPENSATOR (more ahead), and 2)Surface floatation.

The reason I stress "compensator" is because a Buoyancy COMPENSATOR is pretty necessary when diving a full 1/4" wetsuit. With no wetsuit, or a thin shorty, you can KIND OF (more ahead) "compensate" using your lungs. There is just no way to compensate for suit compression and the resultant buoyancy loss by using your lungs. You would be "bottom scratching" in every sense of the word. Not too kosher nowadays in most popular dive areas.

The reason I stress "kind of" is because there will be some weight loss during the dive due to the use of the air in your cylinders. That can amount to nearly 5 pounds. 5 pounds is already a lung-full for me. You want to weight to be neutral at the surface at the end of the dive ("at the surface" assumes that you are wearing a suit) with a moderate breath. That means that you would REALLY need to keep your lungs full at the beginning of the dive just to stay off the bottom. The problem is that if you aren't able to breathe normally at the end of the dive (i.e. have to breathe shallow to keep from floating), then you probably aren't outgassing as efficiently as you should be. It makes it even more important to watch those tables when you get near the limits. This is my theory and I'm open to correction if breathing doesn't affect outgassing. I should think it would.
Now that I've gone beyond what I meant to say........I LOVE vintage diving. Where I normally dive requires the use of a full 1/4 inch wetsuit, and therefore a BC (in the ocean), so I can't attest too well to the "freedom" aspect of vintage diving. I do a lot of river diving where I don't wear the BC so I do get part of the sense of the uncluttered feeling, but the buoyancy loss of the suit even at 15-20 feet does put me on the bottom. At those times I am a true bottom scratcher.
For me, it is more the idea of going back to the roots of our diving heritage. Plus the equipment is so darned COOL. Some like to camp in the middle of nowhere in a tent, others have to have an RV with a television and shower. Some are into history, some only live for the present. Some like antiques in their houses, others will only have modern or futuristic decor. I guess it just depends on who you are and what you are into. We have some full-out converts, some who dive vintage every once in a while for something different, then there are others (usually those who haven't tried it) who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the old gear and who trust only the very latest in technology. It's funny, though....once you delve into the construction and workings of the "old" regulators, you quickly find that the basic designs really have changed very little.

 

[Luis H]

The live vests and Mae West of the 1960 were mostly for surface flotation.
Even the Fenzy was mostly considered at first a self rescue device (The Divers Parachute). The Fenzy was first introduced in France in 1961, but didn’t appear in America until around 1968. True horse collar BC didn’t become popular in the US until the early 1970 (still vintage).

Here is a link to Dave Mclean presentation on "The History of BCs":
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=122357&highlight=History+BC

A common old technique to deal with wetsuit compression is to weight yourself for your expected diving depth. Even with the introduction of a safety stop, I prefer to weight myself to be neutral at 10 to 15 ft at the end of the dive (unless I have a long shallow swim back to shore).

Most of the buoyancy change in a wetsuit occurs in shallow depth. I prefer to swim down for the first 10 feet or so to compress my wetsuit than carry that extra weight. When you get down to 15 ft that extra weight will require more air in your BC. The more air in your BC the more fluctuation your buoyancy will have as your depth changes when you swim up and down a reef.

IMHO vintage diving is in part about simplicity. Trying to swim like a fish or a dolphin. Try to imitate the real masters of swimming. Your arms should be relaxed on your side for minimal drag, but it is OK to occasional use them as pectoral fins (fish use them). And yes, most of the buoyancy adjustments should come from your lungs.

 

[james croft]

I was sitting around reading this and trying to decide to work on getting the lawnmower started (carb need work) or cleaning the shop. I just said "Screw it!"
I'm grabbing my vintage gear and heading to the river to celebrate the last day of summer. See ya later.

 

[moneysavr]

The better double hose regs do. The position of the reg is critical though. The tank must be worn low on the back so the reg body is between your shoulder blades. Swimming in a slightly heads up position to keep the mouth piece even with the reg body gives the best result.
Purists will cringe, but my favorite combination is one of my double hose regs paired up with my Pro-QD BC. I use old steel '72s with it as these regs only tolerate 2250 psi anyway(most of them) and the steel has much better characteristics then an aluminum 80.
I don't have a banjo fitting, but given the depth, I know how much time I have anyway, so a pressure guage isn't that critical. I also tend to stick to easy dives with them. My deepest so far with a double hose has been 60 fow. For me, diving vintage is about having fun anyway. They are better regs for photography. Especially for taking pictures of fish who do seem to be as intimidated by the bubbles coming out behind your head.
Find someone who owns one and start talking vintage. More likely then not you'll get a chance to try one out. They are a different animal and require different technique. For most of my diving I won't be giving up my Poseidons anytime soon. That being said I'll continue to enjoy my two hosers as long as the parts are available to keep them going.

Jim

Oh Jim,
Don't forget to let your dive pal know your using vintage too,Kind of like the air stream from my old Sherwood's-keeps a guy from wrenching on your tank,reg,valve with the air all streaming from the back of your head! Ha! Ha!

 

[Nemrod]

Modern trained divers are not at all trained for "vintage" diving. They are to equipment dependent. You can not inflate the BC if you don't have one and the requirment to get weighting spot on is not on their list. Trim--trim--I hear this all the time, what are they talking about? Trim is a big deal now and considered advanced, we learned it and never knew it was trim. Vintage divers SWIM through the water in a 3D fashion. We swim down and we swim horozontal and at the end of the dive we swim back up. There is none of this inflating and deflating and bobbing and sinking thing that PadI teaches.

New equipment is all plastic and designed to become obsolete and therefore lacks durability and toughness of older so called vintage gear or even stuff from the 0s and 80s. When diving, most of my dives are not actually vintage themed--I just pick my favorite gear which often is a mix of old and new(er). I like my Mares X vision mask, my Teknas, my BP/wing and my Phoenix Royal Aqua Master double hose outperforms all modern regulators with equal capaibilty to support LP accesories and HP requirements.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b395/JRWJR/DSCF0086.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b395/JRWJR/DSCF0103.jpg

The future is vintage or some mixture thereof.

PS, notice the slung 30 in the second photo, who says you cannot do all that fancy stuff with a double hose. The slung 30 has a Tekna 2100 and the PRAM supports the wing and SPG and the octapus Tekna 2100 on 40 inch hose bungeed to neck.

N

 

[David Wilson]

I'm not a purist when it comes to vintage equipment. I'm quite prepared to use modern gear so long as it is still made in pre-1975 styles and materials.

When I started diving back in the 1960s, oval rubber masks and full-foot rubber fins were the norm. Plastic and open-heel fins were for people who couldn't afford full-foot rubber fins while silicone masks were for people with allergies. I was happy then to snorkel with an oval rubber mask and a pair of full-foot fins and I'm happy now to wear the same combination in preference to the more expensive, plastic, overengineered products currently in fashion. I snorkel weekly in the North Sea using this classic gear. I've also recently discovered the simplicity, manoeuvrability and thermal benefits of reproduction vintage drysuits. Their modern multi-material counterparts seem bulky and gimmicky in comparison.

I'm also well aware of the limitations of the equipment I use and will never place myself in danger. Divers need to keep their brains in gear instead of over-relying on the alleged life-preserving attributes of their equipment.

 

[pescador775]

This question has no single answer. I'm an older fellow and accustomed to diving with several styles and apparatus. Regardless of style, I fill my my tanks with Nitrox, including for use with the RAM regulator. For most purposes, I don't like to have a lot of stuff hanging off me or the tank. However, for diving deeper wrecks I make concessions in the form of standard equipment with gauges and computer combinations plus auto inflate BC, especially when pushing deco limits. However, I will not hesitate to alternately use the RAM with twins, BC and gauge console if in the mood. There may also be an auto inflation device for buoyancy control. Mostly, though, I am a freediver and spearfish a lot. Even a freediver finds a need for compressed air apparatus for tending to underwater inspection of the boat, freeing a stuck anchor or fish. A small set of doubles with strap harness and RAM is most convenient for this purpose. In a jam, I can swoosh up the ladder, scoop up a fully assembled set of twin tanks with DH reg and be over the side in two minutes. Since I always wear a UDT vest when freediving there is no need to remove anything except fins which I change out at the same time. Everything else stays. The double tanks and double hose minus any accessories are especially convenient when I use the small boat. The twin set will lie on deck without rolling and is always ready. There is very little maintenance and the reliability is very high with such a simple and rugged setup.

 

[ScubaTexan]

I thoroughly enjoyed my dive with the vintage gear and can't wait to do it again someday.