Din or Yoke Set Up - Which to go for?

[mockney]

I double clicked both Herman's and Bob's posts because they put a lot of thought into them, regardless of the points raised.

Now here's a twist. I recently lost the O ring out of my DIN reg (fell out somewhere between transport and dives) and did not have a spare. The people I was diving with had spare yoke O rings but not DIN (because they all dove Yoke) so I was almost SOL. Fortunately, while I did not have a spare DIN O ring, I had a spare reg set on my pony

Again, purely anecdotal and lacking in any scientific fact.

Well said, both were fantastic responses and made very interesting reading. Guys I really appreciate the time you took to post your responses. Top class.

 

[Diving Dubai]

All the main points have been covered here

i was Yoke but have been DIN for over a year. The only thing I will point out is this. If you have your own DIN tanks ensure you eith use an Ali screw in cap or tank adaptor for transit. If a Din valve gets knocked it is POSSIBLE that it can deform slightly making the din hard to screw in (repair is to run a tap Down the threads


my personal hate is tank adapters, or rather the hex key size. Even though I have an imperial and metric hex key set in my dive box there still are occasions where I find one I haven't got the right size for. I mean hard is it to agree on one size (that can approximately fit both metric and imperial keys)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

The easiest way to deal with the issue if you are on a budget is to invest in some extra orings for your hoses and buy a basic first stage in yoke to use when traveling. Swap hoses for vacation and go.

 

[Oldbear]

... If you want to plan for the future, just buy the DIN conversion kit and put it up until you need it, then you or your LDS can switch the reg over...


Bob

I have been told by a ScubaPro Tech the beauty of the MK 25 is how easily the regulator itself can be converted (not adapted) from Yoke to DIN. The "Conversion" kits replaces the yoke mount with a DIN mount...not an adapter. When I bought mine I bought one yoke for recreational and travel diving and two DIN for future Tech diving. I now have my two DINs setup for two sidemount configurations.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I dived for years with yoke, because I rent tanks, and as has been pointed out above, that's what is on 99% of rental tanks outside of regions that predominantly cater to European or technical divers. At one point, I switched to DIN and have now switched BACK to yoke. This is what happened:

Two or three years ago I started down the road to some more advanced classes in North Florida with instructors who are of the cave diving persuasion, and of course DIN regs are standard for that. North Florida is firmly DIN territory. So I sold my old yoke regs and bought a DIN reg set with the long primary hose, etc. However, it seemed like every time I took a trip elsewhere, I still had to either make a special request for a DIN tank or use the yoke-to-DIN adapter. Two drawbacks to the adapter are: (1) I might forget to bring it, and (2) it takes away a centimeter or so of clearance behind your head. The reduction in clearance bothers some people, and I was one of them.

Sometimes, a dive op would have a convertible tank with the removable plug to convert between DIN and yoke. That is a brilliant solution for one's personal tanks, but I found that some rental tanks had damaged DIN threads. It seems that rental tanks are subject to a lot of hard use, and it's not uncommon for the DIN threads to be slightly deformed--not enough to prevent one from removing the plug with a hex wrench, but just enough to make screwing in the DIN reg difficult to impossible. I was told that if I forced my DIN reg to screw into damaged threads, I could damage the threads on my reg as well. No thank you. After experiencing this annoyance a few times, I bought a proper DIN conversion kit from the manufacture of my reg set and converted it to yoke.

When the time comes that I take a multi-day technical class, I will switch it back to DIN, and not before then.

My recommendation is to only buy DIN if you own your own tanks or rent tanks in a region where DIN is common.

 

[Peter69_56]

Din valve with insert is becoming very common in Asia and very common in Australia
I started with yoke and had to convert 4 regs to din and now use solely din. I recommend din to all except those in usa where clearly yoke dominates

 

[mockney]

If you already have tanks (Faber) with Yoke fittings, I presume its quite easy to change these over to DIN?.

 

[gcarter]

I double clicked both Herman's and Bob's posts because they put a lot of thought into them, regardless of the points raised.

Now here's a twist. I recently lost the O ring out of my DIN reg (fell out somewhere between transport and dives) and did not have a spare. The people I was diving with had spare yoke O rings but not DIN (because they all dove Yoke) so I was almost SOL. Fortunately, while I did not have a spare DIN O ring, I had a spare reg set on my pony

Again, purely anecdotal and lacking in any scientific fact.

LOL. Because my son has DIN and I have yoke, we have convertible valves on all our tanks, and I always carry an extra insert in our save-a-dive. So even if we were to run out of spare O-rings in THAT baggie, we could always thieve one from the insert

 

[DaleC]

Good thinking...

 

[shoredivr]

The dive shop I frequent has all rental tank valves as dial-outs (din valve with screw out/in yoke seat).