What upgrades did you make to the sidewinder?

[grantctobin]

^what Tom said with regards to the needle valves/orfice.

I don't need weight with LP85s, base layer, Halo3D, and heated shirt, but ended up adding a 3lb weight on the left shoulder. This offsets the steel 2L, valve, first stage, and 2 20ah cans on my butt and lets me keep a bit more gas in my feet. Using a lighter cylinder valve and a smaller first stage helped alleviate some of the initial imbalance. Alternatively you can move to an AL13 (or find a euro 1.5L 300bar which I think is lighter) to get more weight out of rear. LP50s are about 3lb less negative when full but the rebreather is neutrally buoyant by itself.

The sump heads have no OPV on the left and no ADV on the right with no ability to change either of those things. OTOH, they're lighter and have fewer things to leak. If you have to bailout with them (or if you go with stock heads with plugged OPV), you'll need to vent the DSV/BOV if you were bailed out on ascent.

 

[tbone1004]

@grantctobin if I was buying one of these, I'd definitely buy it sans ADV and use a BOV instead of that. OPV I'd be tempted to look at something like a BC dump valve on the counterlung... Curious to think about. Not a sump diver, so I'd probably just leave the OPV stock, but removing the ADV if you're using a BOV would save a lot of hassle.

 

[grantctobin]

Yeah concur. OPV generally don't catastrophically leak and more often deteriorate over time but I guess it could happen. The BC dump valve is an interesting idea. A LightMonkey Tinkle valve welded somewhere on the lung would work too. I don't know if there's a "nice" spot for it given the height. Billy Gambrill I think was the one that started doing that with his lungs and Ted McCoy has something similar. Maybe on the bottom of the lung adjacent to the counterlung attachment point? Even that is pretty thin. I believe you can only order the sump heads as a pair but Mike does sell an ADV plug that screws in instead of the ADV.

 

[rddvet]

ideally you'd remove the leaky valve altogether, though the unofficial needle valve from KISS actually has 2 leaky valves in it to help stabilize everything with the needle. Fathom maintains the blocked first stage because it helps to minimize the need to adjust the needle, basically it makes the needle act like an adjustable CMF. If you have it unblocked, it removes depth limits unless you get the crazy stiff springs to have super high IP, but also gives you the freedom to use different first stages where blocked firsts are limited to sealed diaphragms.

I would think that the blocked first stage is more ideal since there's less fiddling. You can always go to an unbalanced backup if the blocked one fails. If I added a needle valve it will probably be Charlie's. I won't be heading down to 300ft anytime soon, so no need for a different spring.

What are the reasons for skipping the ADV. I've got an ADV on the fathom. I don't use it much at all, but it's nice to have for things like scootering. I never really have an issue with mine and just shut it down when I don't want it firing. Is it just that any ADV is an additional failure point or does the KISS one particularly suck? I don't need one, but I've enjoyed mine when I have wanted it to fire.

 

[tbone1004]

@rddvet with the CMF's in the needle valve from KISS it acts somewhat similar to the blocked first stage so there is nearly no fiddling which is nice.

ADV's in general are just annoying and if you have a BOV, you can crack it a bit and it will work as an ADV as well. Mine is from Poseidon and works like that normally, and the DiveSoft BOV has 3 positions on it. OC, CCR, and ADV mode where the second stage has a little slit thing that lets the second stage on the bov work like an ADV.

 

[rddvet]

@rddvet with the CMF's in the needle valve from KISS it acts somewhat similar to the blocked first stage so there is nearly no fiddling which is nice.

ADV's in general are just annoying and if you have a BOV, you can crack it a bit and it will work as an ADV as well. Mine is from Poseidon and works like that normally, and the DiveSoft BOV has 3 positions on it. OC, CCR, and ADV mode where the second stage has a little slit thing that lets the second stage on the bov work like an ADV.

I think I've been lucky with my adv, since it seems most people don't like them. Not all of the Divesoft ones are 3 position. I chose the BOV with no ADV mode. There were some issues with the adv ones.

Edd was pretty helpful when we talked the other day. He has his setup that he feels fits most people, and like anything else you can build on it from there. I've been surprised to hear how many things can be added on after the fact. So there's not much worry if I'm used to having a secondary monitor and don't get one, I can always add it later.

I'm still trying to convince myself not to buy one. I really don't need it, but it seems like a fun unit to screw around with.

 

[tbone1004]

@rddvet you can buy the barrel to put it in ADV mode, it's just a small slot on the opposite side. If you suspect you need ADV for rapid descents or whatever, just partially crack it and it will work as an ADV for you. Just one extra thing to not have to fiddle with since most people have them turned off most of the time anyway.

 

[rjack321]

my sidewinder:
normal plate attached to an SMS 75 with a DR weight plate holding 16lbs on the back
normal ADV and OPV heads
foam insulation
scrubber heaters
large size CL, no dump straw
scrim in the inlet scrubber

left side has a fisher cable which I put a used predator on so that both my units are not reliant on the same shearwater (my meg has a fisher & my petrel)
narked/shearwater hud

right side has
adv plumbed into a iQsub dil MAV, Adv goes on the straight through connection with a sliding shut off
other dil hose goes to a Y on the o2 inlet port
the hoses route over the right shoulder and the MAV sits on just above my right dring
bottom of the dil MAV has a 4" pigtail with a female QC6

o2 side is a blocked first stage with a hefty spring in it set at 200psi IP.
Fathom needle valve
sliding shutoff on the O2 inlet
braided hoses on both with a spg zip tied to the side of the needle valve
needle valve comes from the 1st on the lower right across my chest and clips to the left chest dring

I tried an unblocked 1st on the (fathom) needle valve - once. No way, that is effing nuts to try and scooter with in dry gloves. I can't feel the knob nearly well enough to get the adjustment remotely close. Even with bare hands its going to be a massive added task load if you have a reel or a scooter or both. At least with the high sensitivity (even 1/4 turn is a huge change) on the Swagelok needle valves used in the fathom and chris kennedy models, unblocking the 1st stage is borderline dangerous. Beware.

 

[rddvet]

my sidewinder:
normal plate attached to an SMS 75 with a DR weight plate holding 16lbs on the back
normal ADV and OPV heads
foam insulation
scrubber heaters
large size CL, no dump straw
scrim in the inlet scrubber

left side has a fisher cable which I put a used predator on so that both my units are not reliant on the same shearwater (my meg has a fisher & my petrel)
narked/shearwater hud

right side has
adv plumbed into a iQsub dil MAV, Adv goes on the straight through connection with a sliding shut off
other dil hose goes to a Y on the o2 inlet port
the hoses route over the right shoulder and the MAV sits on just above my right dring
bottom of the dil MAV has a 4" pigtail with a female QC6

o2 side is a blocked first stage with a hefty spring in it set at 200psi IP.
Fathom needle valve
sliding shutoff on the O2 inlet
braided hoses on both with a spg zip tied to the side of the needle valve
needle valve comes from the 1st on the lower right across my chest and clips to the left chest dring

I tried an unblocked 1st on the (fathom) needle valve - once. No way, that is effing nuts to try and scooter with in dry gloves. I can't feel the knob nearly well enough to get the adjustment remotely close. Even with bare hands its going to be a massive added task load if you have a reel or a scooter or both. At least with the high sensitivity (even 1/4 turn is a huge change) on the Swagelok needle valves used in the fathom and chris kennedy models, unblocking the 1st stage is borderline dangerous. Beware.

What's the scrim in the inlet scrubber for?

I've been warned you can dive with an unblocked reg and a needle valve, but warned it's best not to.

When you added the needle valve, did you remove the leaky valve?

 

[rjack321]

What's the scrim in the inlet scrubber for?

I've been warned you can dive with an unblocked reg and a needle valve, but warned it's best not to.

When you added the needle valve, did you remove the leaky valve?

the scrims minimize the dust on the inlet side. similar to the scrims used in the JJ

Yes the Kiss o2 MAV is an integrated MAV/orifice. So when you take that off, you just drop the fathom needle valve in. Kiss has numerous "prototype" needle valves that they wont actually sell to anyone not on the special list.