Vote on your preferred BC -

[simbrooks]

Thanks Guys. Although I don't understand much of your discussions, I enjoy them, and I feel the forces are strong within me, and I think I need to buy a horsecollar....

Tim

Use the force.... er... Tim

Its just like the physics and mechanics we did in high school, and retouched on really early on in our engineering courses. Talking of which i have to revise some of that stuff soon for my PE - been a long time coming....

 

[simbrooks]

I agree with the below but I think _useage_ statistics would be higher than _onersship_ statistics. So let's say we change the question slightly. Rather then ask what percentage of _divers_ own backplate style BCs let's ask what percent of _dives_ are done with backplace style BC's. You can't determine that ratio my looing at sales statistics. I think the large majority of divers don't dive very much, just a few times a year on vacaton or maybe even every few years. So go out on the local boats and beachs and count what is the ratio there.
I see maybe about one in ten using BP/W setup. A fairly high ratio.

I think sales figure might be misleading becasue my guess is that most gear is sold into people's closets and garages and sees very little use. In my local area (So. Cal) there were several hundred OW graduates each year. Where _are_ all those folks? If they all went diving after OW the local beaches and charter boats would be full up.

Actually around here i mostly see jackets and BI's, unless i go to cave country, then its between 90/10 at cavern/cave only to 50/50 in "OW safe" locations - BP/W to others ratio. There are plenty of folks i know at work and elsewhere who have dive gear at home gathering dust, i offer, but they just dont want to get out there.

BTW - ChrisA, just a quick thing - can you get rid of those _ _ marks? Made it hard to follow your post, where they supposed to be " " marks or * * or something, dont know why but they distracted from the reading of your post.

 

[Shiprekd]

Chris - exactly! ownership and rentals as well as what they were trained with would be the true telling statistics. NOT a 1-10 beach statistic or "how many on this board".

Grateful - I'm with you all the way. I think those of us who are dive professionals with significant experience have a more subtle and knowledgeable approach. If a student seems restricted or uncomfortable in a jacket, I'll suggest to the instructor to put them in a BI to see if that calms them down. Once they're trained, then the choice is theirs. On another thread, someone who uses bp/w blatantly admits to diss`n his buddy because he wears a jacket. Both factions are at fault for sure.

Scott Zeagle - While my main go-to is my jacket, every once in awhile I'll keep up the skillz with my Ranger - which by the way, I'm a Zeagle repair (reg) tech... hehe

 

[-hh]

(snip!)
I take it that it was easier to dive supine with a HC instead of BI?

For the BC factor, it was, but pragmatically there were other factors that made it worse. Specifically, in the "old days", you were more likely to have been using a single stage regulator, and to make a long story short, a single-state regulator adjusted to breath nicely under our 'normal' orientation, when you rolled over to supine, this caused the vertical distance between your lungs and the regulator to change by around 1.5 feet, which resulted in a big enough change to its IP such that the regulator would then "force feed" you. This was generally considered an uncomfortable sensation, plus if you lost grip on your doublehose mouthpiece for any reason, a maximum strength freeflow was guarenteed to result.

I took my BP/W, regs, wetsuit, booties, fins, mask, HID and a few other bits in a large backpack to SoCal last summer, easily fit in the overhead locker and not so heavy either - maybe 15-18# IIRC. If i had expensive photo gear too i would have put the wetsuit and such in the hold, kept the regs up with me for sure. I found it easy to pack away, no extra padding taking up space, folds nice and flat and not that heavy compared to most jacket and BI BC's out there - between 6-9# for those

It does seem that a lot of BI & Jacket BC's have become "bloatware" with tons of padding and IMO other useless junk like weight integration...it seems that the KISS principle has been forgotten by the consumer, and the industry's more than happy to provide us with BC's that feel good while standing dry in a showroom without a wetsuit on. Personally, I expect my next BC to be a return to the $200 cheapo Jacket.

When I travel, my entire carry-on budget gets consumed by my UW camera gear. At ~27lbs, my UW camera gearbag exceeds the individual item carry-on weight limit for some airlines, so I have to smile and pretend it weighs nothing . I have done "pure carry-on" flights with warmwater configurations of my dive gear, but they're only possible because I've left the UW camera system at home.


-hh

 

[-hh]

Thanks Guys. Although I don't understand much of your discussions, I enjoy them, and I feel the forces are strong within me, and I think I need to buy a horsecollar....

While I hated my horsecollar, I wish that I had never thrown it out...I've since seen the exact same model listed for sale by some of the "Antique Dive Gear" clubs for more than I've paid for some of my dive computers!

And on a more serious note, if I were going to be diving someplace where I knew that the odds were pretty good of fairly rough waters and long surface floats, I would most definitely very seriously consider taking a horsecollar because of its generally better 'drownproofing' characteristics on the surface...its a trade-off of comfort during the dive versus comfort (bordering on safety) after the dive. Its something that we don't necessarily think too much about when we're able to surface right under the diveboat and thus, only have to spend "30 seconds" on the surface.

And FWIW, the things I hated about my HC had nothing to do with how it floated me. Instead it was:

a) It predated power inflators, and its oral fill fitting was horrible, as it was the old straightline-push type, not even the modern "L" type you see today...it would frequently result in a cut lip, especially if trying to use it with thick wetsuit mittens.

b) The crotch strap was only around 1" wide before it rolled itself up to be even narrower...a literal pain in the naughty bits.

FWIW, this is where I'm obligated to grouse "you kids don't appreciate..." yada yada

-hh