For years the Rec wing has been our top selling wing. Divers enjoy the versatile design that allows them to dive both double and single tanks. Same with the Trek wing. Occasionally we hear from divers that the Rec and Trek wings “taco” or wrap around the tank when dived with a single tank.
To remedy this, we’ve created Wing Retainer Hook and Loops that affix to the wing and the harness waist belt. For the past 45 days, our Rec and Trek wings have been shipping with the necessary wing tabs and if you are interested, we can send you the rest of the hardware you’ll need to set up this system. Just send an email to us at support@diverite.com along with your full address. Shipping is free in the US. Standard shipping rates apply overseas.
A copy of Wing Retainer Hook and Loop instructions are located in our online library at http://www.diverite.com/products/library/productmanuals/
Kathleen
While test diving our new Classic 360 Wing the other night I experienced some roll and immediately thought I was having air shift in the bladder. Then I realized I needed to make some adjustments. The TransPac I was wearing was last worn with a single tank, plus I am used to diving the O2ptima or sidemount. I hadn’t had a set of heavy, steel doubles on my back for over a year. All I needed to do was tighten up my harness to support the gear I was now wearing.
As I thought about the roll issue I thought about what my ski instructor had told me over the holidays. You adjust the boots and bindings for the type of skiing you do; the more aggressive you ski the tighter the boots and bindings should be. Technical divers need to look at adjustments the same way. Variations in drysuit and wetsuit selection can change the way your harness fits, changing cylinder sizes like heavy steels at home to aluminum 80s in Mexico changes the way your wing handles the cylinder weight and your trim.
I see more and more divers these days wearing loose waist belts and shoulder straps on their harnesses. If you ever see experienced cave divers doing long swims they wear their harness with a tight fit at the beginning of the dive and sometimes will tighten it more as they get to depth. The diver is suspended by a harness with a wing sandwiched between him and the doubles. It’s like you are a sky diver; how many sky divers would jump from a plane with a loose harness? You want to make sure the harness is tight when diving doubles so any change in buoyancy or body movement happen together and not a cascade event, when you point your body down to swim under a ledge and the cylinders join you a second later. This may not seem like a big deal, but it can cause you to get out of trim quickly and the moments it takes to recover can mean loss of control. A skier needs to know that when he moves his feet inside the boots that the boots attached to the bindings and skis react immediately or he may fall or loss control.
I have watched divers very loosely fasten the waist belt on the harness. I even had one person tell me he didn’t like any pressure on his stomach. Control is having your equipment move when you do and not a few seconds later. Look at your adjustments and check them again underwater and make sure your equipment is secure. I am confident you will have a more enjoyable dive.
Lamar
A couple of weeks ago, one of our Ambassadors was in town for an O2ptima crossover. A filmmaker, he works a lot in freezing cold temperatures and mentioned that his feet are frozen after several hours on the boat looking for the wildlife he is going to film.
We gave him a 905 drysuit that comes standard with neoprene boots and I explained to him the principles behind proper insulation. That is, you have to give room for air to move inside the boot. If you stuff your feet into a boot, the insulating sock will compress and lose its ability to keep your feet warm. A proper fitting boot will allow for air to move in the boot so the loft of the sock can maintain its form and your feet will stay insulated. The same principle works for undergarments on the torso.
It got me thinking, so I wrote an article about drysuits and undergarments. It is published in the download section of our 905 drysuits, Polartec and Primaloft undergarments. Article: Selecting Drysuits and Undergarments
Our Ambassador was impressed with the suit and is now wearing a 905 drysuit and Primaloft socks. Dive Rite Ambassadors
Lamar
Light emitting diodes (LED) is the latest in lighting technology. As with any new technology it is growing at a rapid pace. The last time I saw technology growing like this was with computer processor chips. The fastest computer today is outdated in six months and we are seeing the same in the LED market. It makes sense because of the combination of electronics that are making the advances, including the LED, drivers and heat sinking combinations.
The first high output LED for Dive Rite was the 300 lumen flashlight that we released in the summer of 2007. Now we can power it to get 500 lumens … who knows where it will be later this year. Kind of like the 1 gig processor being replaced by the 1.6 and then the 2 gig processor all in about 12 months. We plan to keep up with the technology and give you the best we can within our design parameters. So now the LED 300 is a LED 500. Sorry if what you buy today is outdated in a few months, however we believe in progress and our customers expect us to deliver the best technology available. Don’t wait to purchase an LED now because the lumens will be higher in the future because I can’t tell when the next increase in output is going to occur. Our engineers send the latest to us as they get it developed.
Lamar
I see many variations of the singles mounting plate on the market today. It seems every technical equipment company has something similar for adapting the hardcore doubles backplate to single tank. I’m flattered to see so many copies, but it all started with trying to make a girl happy.
In 1986, my girlfriend started diving twin 80’s for her cave class. She liked the feel of her new technical harness (that’s another story…the origin of the deluxe harness) and she also wanted to dive her tech harness with singles rather than going back to a jacket BC. I thought about how to do it. Some cave divers had cut slots into their backplate and Classic Wing in order to thread a couple of cam straps through the plate. I wanted something more finished and adaptable for the product. I knew the larger market for a SMP was to existing cave divers and not new cave divers. Experienced cave divers already had a backplate and wing and knew how to dive them, so putting a single on a sixty pound wing (not something we recommend for a new diver) would be easy for them to deal with.
Looking for a starting point I took one of our ABS backplates and trimmed it about 1 ½ inches out from the center bends and cut slots in it for cam straps. The ABS was easy to machine so I whipped out a few samples and gave them to friends and my girlfriend. They dived it, liked it and orders started coming in as divers saw the samples.
The design has not changed over the years and we see other dive manufacturers have enjoyed selling this design under their own brand name. Since the first SMP, Dive Rite has added cam strap slots to all of our backplates and wings so the SMP is no longer really needed to dive a single on a backplate. However, it looks good so some divers still prefer to use one just like I designed it in 1986 for my girlfriend. My girlfriend became my wife in 1987 and Lee Ann has made me think about women and diving ever since.
Lamar
On another note the slots in the doubles wing came before we added the slots in the backplate. The Europeans had a few methods for putting a harness/wing on doubles. One method involved a molded doubles tank boot with one doubles tank band and a manifold or independents. We supply them with extra long cam straps to attach the twin cylinders to the harness/wing combination. Today many of the Europeans use the double tank band/bolts method for attaching a harness, backplate/wing combination.
I finally got a chance to go side mount diving after DEMA. Jerry Murphy, our Product Manager, and I did Rock Bluff and had to dig the entrance out just to get in. I felt this would be a good test for the JetStream Regulator. I wanted a regulator that I could breathe from the left side without running it around my neck when side mounting. The JetStream worked very well. It secures to the left shoulder with a bungee strap around the webbing to keep it high and out of silt. I had our new regulator necklace (debuted at DEMA) on the right side regulator. The adjustable regulator necklace let me pull it up tight for side mount…a little tighter than most divers would wear a regulator for back mounted cylinders.
Observations
- Both regulators – I had to dig some small rocks out of the first stage caps - yeah it was very tight.
- The necklace works just as designed, but I am having the manufacturer change the crimps before production is released so it will be another 30 days before we have stock.
- Nomad bottle placement is good with the new chokers on the necks. This was my first chance to use them in a small restriction situation. I had tested them, but had not had the chance to test the tank placement with chokers in a tight body squeeze.
I routed the Jetstream second stage hose downward in order to make the standard 28-inch hose length lie flat. It pulls up easily for use.
Lamar
Today I am writing about fins after overhearing a diver at one of our Tech Tours complain that the Dive Rite fin is too heavy, and walked away with her split fins in her hand. I thought about her comment and realized the problem. Most divers are looking for what is easy, rather than what is efficient. Efficiency is the cornerstones of cave diving training; the average diver cannot appreciate the discipline cave divers use, yet it is the premise for all technical diving disciplines.
I was a test diver for the original split fin, the Apollo Bio fin. They completed their test in recreational environments and I got to play with them in the caves of North Florida. I was not impressed. The split fin is designed to give the diver forward propulsion with the least amount of directed effort. Essentially, this means wasted energy and still there are results. The split fin is designed for the diver doing a modified flutter kick and nothing else, which is the kick used by newly certified divers. Instructors spend hours teaching new divers not to bicycle kick because it is inefficient. The split fin takes advantage of the bicycle kick mentality, giving divers a method of inefficient kicking, yet still with some movement forward.
During our testing of split fins and our fins, divers using split fins could not maintain the pace set by average cave divers. One test diver suffered severe cramps using split fins in an attempt to maintain a normal pace for a dive he had done many times before. Split fins can propel an open water diver with a single cylinder through the water to the divers satisfaction, but it is out-classed in technical dive environments. For technical diving, the diver needs a fin that can perform in various conditions including high flow, tight areas and moving mass thru the water. A technical diver needs a fin that is an extension of the foot for complete control and application of various technical fining techniques such as, modified flutter, frog, shuffle kick and ceiling walk. A split fin just can’t compare. Whenever you increase the mass of a diver from single cylinder to doubles, side mount or staging the split fin does not measure up.
Why did I buy the molds for the Apollo Prestige Fin? We bought the molds for the fins in 2001 because I believed they were the best fins on the market. I dived it for two years and was very impressed with the performance-to-weight ratio of the fin. It actually looks like the old Farallon fin with the rounded blade that was considered the best fin on the market in its day. I owned three pair of them, but it took an above-average diver to take advantage of the power you could extract from the fin. For cave divers battling upstream in caves with outflows of 1 to 2 knots you needed every advantage you could get.
The Dive Rite fin is designed with two materials, a plastic and rubber combination to give it strength and flexibility in water. Instead of venting the middle we have a flexible rubber insert to utilize the thrust in every stroke. We don’t believe in wasting any movement the diver may take with his fins. The blade design captures any nuance the diver may use in propulsion techniques. This lets the diver use every ounce of energy he (she) expends with a kick. This is very important to the tech diver pushing one to two miles against current. Split fins can’t capitalize on the various fin kicks to decrease fatigue and cramping like a single blade fin. Our fin is not for everyone. If you can’t swim or run a mile then stick with the split fin, but if you don’t want to waste your energy then use a fin designed to take advantage of the effort you put into the swim.
I know some may disagree because you own split fins, but facts are facts. If you question my conclusions then send me an email and join me for a dive.
Lamar
We have listened to requests for more logbook memory and compatible cabling for 4th cell CCR integration. All these things are a go, but delayed the production beta units. We had to give up our slot at the PCB production house to address the new hardware features. As soon as we can get back on the schedule at the PCB house we are days away from production beta units.
Lamar
The production beta units should be ready next week. The boards are going to the production house over the weekend for programming. We will also be getting ten beta units for final testing.
We are increasing logbook capacity by adding another chip for more memory storage. We should double if not triple the 6.2 hours in the design. The 6.2 hours was worst-case scenario based on diver settings, profile sampling rate, flags, OC/CC mode and gas switches. If you’re traveling and can’t download until you get home, set the sampling rate at 30-second rate for more storage capacity.
We are using an industry-standard transducer rated to 150m. If you take it deeper than that it will not lock out, but there is no guarantee as to the accuracy or the integrity of the pressure transducer.
Lamar
During the Mermet Springs Tech Tour, I was asked about cold water diving with the Nomad sidemount configuration. Wearing gloves, the guys wanted the larger coldwater snaps. I personally didn’t have an issue with the standard clips, but understood the problem. We will now offer the straps with XL bolt snaps for cold water divers. Another point on the straps was length adjustment. We offer three standard sizes that fit most divers and cylinder sizes. If you need a little extra length just add another quick link to each strap. You may find this is a good way to fine tune the rig when transitioning from a drysuit with thick garments to a wetsuit. More to come on weighting in coldwater environments.
Lamar
