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Wrolf Courtney wrote: > > After my little mishap on Saturday (see > http://www.concentric.net/~Wrolf), I am also looking at a BC. Good grief Wrolf, you're diving doubles without any BC at all? Is that common practice on the east coast? > So far I am considering one of the following: > > Dive Rite > Classic Wings $183 > ABS Backplate > & Deluxe Harness 75 > Weight Pouches 12 > Crotch Strap 5 > Rapid Dump 40 > ---------- > $315 > > Mares Synchrotech $375 > > Seaquest Black Diamond $385 > > My questions: > > Which of these will work best with my DUI CF2000X? Here in Alaska, there's almost no one who doesn't use a drysuit. I dive a CF200 as does one of my buddies. He works as a research diver for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game and dives with the Black Diamond for single tank diving. In fact, I think the State bought a whole bunch of Black Diamond BCs and has settled on it as their "standard issue" research diver BC. So, clearly it works fine with a drysuit. However, all they do is shallow water single tank survey work. No doubles. Indeed, my buddy with the Black Diamond also has a standard DiveRite backplate and harness setup with DiveRite original wings which he uses exclusively when he dives doubles. I think he tried the black diamond with doubles once and prefers the backpate. Myself, when I dive with my manifolded doubles, I use an OMS stainless steel backplate with "hogarthian" single piece webbing harness, AUL wings, 6 lb v-weight and no weight belt. For doubles, I would highly recommend any of the standard backplate/harness/wings combos over a "techie" BC. I have yet to see a "technical" BC that is as secure and solid as a backplate/wings combo, and I have yet to see a "technical" BC that will allow you to properly waist-mount a light. I tried diving doubles once with my old Zeagle and it was a mess. Plus, I had no place to put my canister light because the weight pouch pockets were in they way. Finally, I would avoid the pull-dump hose features. It's another failure point you don't need. If you have a propely-sized BC inflator hose (not the elephant trunks that come one some BCs) it will be easy enough to dump through the power inflator. I do have a question for the crowd regarding how manufacturers assign buoyancy ratings to wings. My AUL wings were supposed to have something like 60 lbs of lift. I grew suspicious of the accuracy of this figure since they actually look pretty small...smaller than my Zeagle Ranger even. So, this past weekend I took them down on a saltwater dive with a hanging spring scale, tied the scale off on a piling, tied the wings to the other end of the scale, and inflated the wings until the overpressure relief was frothing. At maximum inflation, the AUL wings showed a whopping 38 lbs of lift. Then I took out my OMS SMB which is advertised as a 75 lb lift bag and tested it. Completely full of air it generated 36 lbs of lift on the spring scale. Since these figures are so far from the manufacturers claimed lift for these items, I though the scale must be way off. However, back in my garage, I hung an AL80 on the scale and it showed 42 lbs which was within a lb of what the same tank weighed on my bathroom scale. And, various weight belts hung on the scale displayed their true weights. So, I'm convinced the scale is accurate. So, what am I doing wrong? Is lift underwater measured in some other manner? Or, have these manufacturers grossly overstated the lift generated by these various items. The reason this is of concern to me is because much of my diving is off of small skiffs in nearshore waters. Unlike the procedure on bigger dive boats, we clip off our gear to lines tied to the rail of the skiff before climbing aboard and then retrieve the gear later. At present, my AUL wings are simply inadequate to float my doubles rig (steel tanks, SS backplate, AUL Spectrum 14 light, and 6 lb v-weight) when the tanks are anything but absolutely empty. This is a big concern to me because if, by accident, my rig should come unclipped from the line and sinks while I'm climbing into the boat, I may lose the entire rig. Some of the walls we dive off of are 300-400' deep and I'm unlikely to ever recover lost gear at that depth. I calculate that my rig is about 32 lbs negative with empty tanks and 48 lbs negative with full tanks. One expects that a 60 lb wing should be more than adequate to float this rig on the surface. Mine is not. I've been contemplating buying a larger wing to replace the AUL wing. Perhaps the Halcyon wing advertised at 65 lbs lift. However, if it's no different than the AUL wing I won't waste my money. Comments anyone? Kent Lind Juneau, Alaska klind@al*.ne* (or) kent.lind@no*.go* -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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