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>That's right. You should have seen the blarney over the long >hose and why we dive flat wings. And the membrane drysuit - >sheesh did that offend the foam gods. It's still hard to get >the bungy wing boys to settle down after we point out the >problem with their selection. Yup. >Dave, DIR isn't just the gear. And no-one who promotes DIR >hasn't acknowledged its genesis. As far as the gear goes, >they just point out the differences between the good gear >and the bullshit gear. And run interference on the >recommenders and promoters of bullshit gear. Yup on the first. Nope on the second. There are a few cave-types that refuse to A: acknowlage that anyone else ever contributed, and B: to acknowlage that there are rigging choices that work in caves that are not the best in salt water. >I find a contents gauge on the HP hose sits in tighter >than a console - less prone to catching and tangling which >I believe is a hazaRD on your NE wrecks. The depth gauge >I keep on my wrist & push it up my fore-arm if I want it out >of the way but easily in sight. My 'console', as it is, is really an Orca Edge and a HP guage. The edge sits towards the tank end of the hose so it's not longer than the HP gage. It is held with a loop of surgical tubing on my harness and is -tight- to me. On the top of the Edge sheath is a sharp knife, which ends up laying horizontally right where either hand can reach it. My second computer (really my primary) is on my forearm with surgical tubing, and it too gets pushed up when digging. Sounds like we are rigged more-or-less the same. >I also use a wing - diverite. I can get up and down >with just the drysuit but there's two reasons why I >prefer the wing as well. - 1) it trims better, 2) >it might not just be me that I need to bring up & >control. Well, with all of my experience without wings, I'm now rethinking this issue. Some list-members (the polite ones.. ;-) have put forth enough arguement favoring the addition that I might consider it as standard kit. Your -last- statement is the most valid that I have seen, being able to assist another. Might be the deciding factor for me. >Is this sidemounts like cave side mounts - off the hips >so you can slide through a horizontal slot, or like sling >cylinders clipped off on the front? Slings. I'm not a caver. I don't go through slots. I don't pretend to dive in caves when I'm wreck diving. >If its sling cylinders on the front, I hated them 'till I >started using 40 cu ft alloys. This is exactly what I am using. >>Wetsuit: A Picasso freedivers 5 mil open cell one. Warmer than >>any closed cell suit and -lots- more comfy. Take a look at freediving >>gear and you'll see some neat stuff that has not made it to scuba >>circles yet. This stuff will be the next hot item. Tell them you saw it >>here. > > >Tried that. Disadvantage in non-tropical water is that >the spearo wetsuits like the picasso are real soft for >conformance. So at depth they compress thinner than the >firmer neoprenes and provide little insulation. Nice >low volume masks though. I'm not so sure about that. The open cell stuff is essentially open to the water and thus is not compressing as much as a rigid cell neoprene. But in all fairness, I use a drysuit much of the time. Only August thru October finds me in a wetsuit up here. But the Spearo stuff is a new world in comfort, eh? The Yokohama neoprene is super. >Can't see this dual outlet doubles thing. DO you mean a >dual outlet manifold? Yup. Regional nomenclature. >You mentioned a perfect manifold before. "Ideal" manifold. An archaic term for a dual outlet manifold. We used to make them by drilling and tapping the blowout disk ports of single K valves and installing aircraft AN fittings into the holes, then ran HP stainless tubing between the bottles to make a dual outlet manifold. Then we cut the HP tubing and added Whitey ball valves to make isolation manifolds. The Sherwood came out with a commercial dual outlet manifold, and finally isolation shutoff manifolds became commercially available. This is a perfect example of modification to accepted gear and techniques which are then followed by manufacturers and finally sold en-mass. >I prefer an isolation manifold because I can then access >all the gas through either reg. Which seems to be the point >of a manifold these days. See above. These were being made 20+ years ago. If you can scrounge up a copy of Tom Mounts old book "Safe Cave Diving" you can find some really excellent descriptions of gear rigs as of 20 years ago. It's very interesting from a historic perspective to see where what we can buy commercially now evolved from. >I got sick of fighting the big British bulletproof >stab jacket. I rarely if ever dive a BC. Only if I >use someone else's gear. Putting the bouyancy at the >front and building outwards on top of it is just, wrong. Yup. When I use it, I'm in carib water in a diveskin and there's no air in it. This is when I am forced to use a single K valve bottle and the little bottle in the ABLJ is just enough spare capability that I'm happy in 100-ish foot water. >You know how you replace a weight with a hammer? Extend >your hammer philosophy to a waist-mounted canister light. >It too doubles as a weight. Yup. You know, the issue here is really not the light. It's my goodie bag. I've gotten so used to having my goodie bag slipped to the bottom of my Aqua-Sun that it's almost second nature. Close at hand, and jettisonable. The only support I need climbing the ladder is to hand up my light to the boat mate, which relieves me of my (hopefully full) goodie bag, and I'm climbing. I guess I'll need to figure out how else to do it. Silly to select a light to suport a goodie bag, but that's reality. Hmmm........... Best regards to all, Dave Sutton -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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