Why Steel Doubles?
- Thread starter Dive0saur
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StreetDoctor
Contributor
That brings up a good point? What happens *if* you had a failure where you weren't at the bottom... how fast can you really deploy that bag? I'm assuming you climb the string then... I bet you'd be very hard pressed to find someone who could go from a normal dive to a fully deployed lift bag (not baby SMB) in less than 3 minutes unless you practiced all the time. 3 minutes with no buoyancy and a decent amount of negativity would put you pretty far below where you originally were.
I see your point. I certainly wouldn't dive my Fabers in a situation where the bottom was below my MOD. For those situations (which are comparatively rare in my diving), I use one of my sets of "baby doubles" (60s or 72s), with which I still need to carry ditchable weight. But when I can do it, I really love the feeling of the heavy doubles with no weight on a belt.
StreetDoctor
Contributor
I agree with you on the no weight belt thing. Luckily even with my drysuit with heavy undergarments I only use 4lbs in a tail weight in my doubles. I absolutely HATE having to use a weight belt.
Depending on where you store your bag and how much practice you have with it, I'm quite sure you can deploy one faster than that. I was running in the three minute range after Fundies; I'm much faster than that now, and I don't do it all that often.
Don't get me wrong; I still think a drysuit is a better choice for deep diving with steel tanks!
Don't get me wrong; I still think a drysuit is a better choice for deep diving with steel tanks!
ScubaInChicago
Contributor
I wear a -4 weight on my belt, but I'll be damned if I'm going to drop a 2K light if I don't have to.
StreetDoctor
Contributor
Was that a smallish SMB used in fundies or an 80lb lift bag like a previous poster had mentioned? I can deploy a DSS SMB in under a minute, There's no way I could do that with my 6' Halcyon SMB let alone a big lift bag. I don't have very much experience with lift bags but like I've said I've owned both 1 meter and 2 meter SMBs and there is a huge difference. A member of my team used to use a 75lb lift bag and I never once saw him deploy it efficiently from depth. Note that was also when using the longer drysuit hose for inflation. In this situation one would either inflate orally (impossible?) with a backup reg if it's open bottomed, or with the much shorter wing inflator which would add quite the risk for entanglement in itself.
It probably wouldn't take me more than three minutes. But StreetDoctor's point was that 2-3 minutes is a LONG time if you are as negative as I would be with a wing failure and there's no bottom.
Again,
What a remote "what if". Who has experienced such a failure? This is reminiscent of the bungeed wings of death debates. At issue was a possible rapid deflation due to a puncture. That actually happened to me, and the result was laughably insignificant. No runaway deflation and I didn't even DIE. Perhaps some are chasing windmills here and in doing so are possibly missing REAL dangers. Why do you think there is so much playful sarcasm by those of us who dive steels?
Looking at my Zeagle Express Tech that I have converted to diving Side Mount: the bladder is stitched and heat sealed. Some wings are sold on their ability to withstand the attack of a Ginsu knife attack. If not bullet proof, they are very close to it.
What a remote "what if". Who has experienced such a failure? This is reminiscent of the bungeed wings of death debates. At issue was a possible rapid deflation due to a puncture. That actually happened to me, and the result was laughably insignificant. No runaway deflation and I didn't even DIE. Perhaps some are chasing windmills here and in doing so are possibly missing REAL dangers. Why do you think there is so much playful sarcasm by those of us who dive steels?
Looking at my Zeagle Express Tech that I have converted to diving Side Mount: the bladder is stitched and heat sealed. Some wings are sold on their ability to withstand the attack of a Ginsu knife attack. If not bullet proof, they are very close to it.
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Actually, I almost have experienced such a failure. I had a case where some sand jammed my inflator valve so that my wing wouldn't hold air. It bled slowly, so that I certainly would have been able to inflate the bag before sinking to oblivion, had that been an issue. But I dive solo most of the time, so I do think pretty carefully about remote possibilities.
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