Everyone has to start somewhere. How did sidemount diving begin, anyway? Did one favored diver go up on a mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, and come down with tablets on which the guidelines for sidemount rigging were inscribed, and from that holy moment, the truth and the light of sidemount were known? Of course not. Early sidemount divers probably looked side slung as well.
Where is this coming from? Are divers just trying to figure things out on their own? If yes, divers should be taking a quality class. Is it just poor Instruction? Am I just crazy and the only one noticing this?
I suspect it is a combination of both. Sidemount remains an area where there is still a lot of experimentation and gear tweaking going on. That is a (VERY) good thing - people are actually learning a lot by trial and error, by testing configurations and finding out what works. That is exciting because that is where innovation comes from.
DaleC:
What's wrong with figuring it out yourself?
YES!!!! I am not saying that the only way to learn is through figuring it out for yourself. But, that is a valuable developmental tool which seems to be increasingly underappreciated.
I have a good friend / dive buddy / fellow instructor who was diving 'sidemount' long before most, using a Ranger. He started side slung and gradually tweaked his rig to improve it. As for the instruction, I doubt that sidemount instruction is vastly different from general (OW) scuba instruction. I see pretty horrific examples of trim among supposedly very experienced (at least in their own minds, related to number of dives and years of teaching and self-proclaimed skill) instructors with OW classes. Why should SM be any different?
When I first heard about sidemount, my initial impression was, 'Hey, I will just clip on my deco bottles, one on each side, and dive them.' I could have become a side slung diver very easily. I see more than a few people doing that. What is interesting is that they feel they are very streamlined in doing so. Frankly, I did not really notice how unstreamlined my deco bottles were until after I started diving a 'proper' sidemount configuration (presuming there is such a thing). There is nothing wrong with people going through that phase. There are a couple of people posting in this thread who did something like that - set up a sidemount rig using existing (non-sidemount) equipment and used it as a starting point. to refine their gear set-up. Fortunately, before I slipped down the side slung slope, I had the benefit of multiple tutorials from an early sidemount diver, long before I ever took a class. And, I continue to learn about sidemount every time I am in the water with diving that way, because every dive is a training dive - of course, that is true for backmount doubles, backmount singles, deco dives, recreational dives, teaching dives, etc.
Karl_H:
Almost anytime you see a sidemount diver here in the Philippines they are using a bad choice in harness (usually due to investing too much $$$ in the harness and saving on a cheap or no course)
I am curious - what types of harnesses do you see being used by these divers?