Mustard Dave
Contributor
How is a BP&W not simpler? It does everything a jacket has to with non of the gimmicky crap. I do not believe the OP would not have the same problems with a jacket, and that her difficulties are purely due to inexperience, which she will overcome as she dives more, hopefully with more open minded divers.
I really cannot see what is difficult about them. To rig a one piece harness, all you need to do is read the instructions, look at somebody else's, or watch a video on youtube. Adjust the shoulder straps so you can reach behind and touch the centre of the plate on the top edge and adjust the waist strap. Then chuck the wing onto the back and bolt your single tank adapter on. Once that is done, you should barely need to adjust it again.
Getting into it couldn't be easier. One arm through one strap, one through the other, thread the crotch strop through the waistband and fasten the buckle. There is no faffing about with adjusting pinch clip sliders, or not being able to get the strap over your shoulder because some crappy bit of plastic is snagging, or getting your kit half on and realising you haven't extended the strap and refitted the pinch-clip after taking it off. Once you are in it, there is less clutter, so you feel less restrained and it is much easier to maintain good trim.
Technical diving is much more complicated than simple recreational stuff. Whoever developed the BP&W system did not look at the jacket BCD and say, "How can we make this more complicated, so we can frighten off recreational divers?"; they looked at equipment and thought about how to simplify and streamline the kit so it is not adding to the challenges they already have. I rarely dive with twins these days as anything that justifies that sort of setup is ideal for the rebreather, but my backplate and wing is now my tool of choice for shallow, single tank diving as it is just so much simpler than a jacket.
When I started diving, I bought a jacket BCD. That was because all the instructors and DMs wore them and I had never seen a BP&W. When I started diving with the club members, I saw they were almost all on BP&Ws, but most had 'comfort' harnesses with all the sliders and plastic crap on them, and the bungeed wing o' death. I had read more about them on the internet, and looked at a few set-ups in the shop and decided to go for the simple doughnut wing and one piece harness.
Despite having never set one up, I still managed to get enough info from the instructions to assemble it. If you can build a flat-pack wardrobe, you can assemble a BP&W. I have no idea why a diver would mount the bladder upside down; anybody who has done an OW course will know the LPI hose comes over your left shoulder.
Any difficulty setting up the kit is not a fault of the equipment. The problem is closed minded instructors who keep promoting the attitude that the BP&W is the purely the tool of the techie. There are several reasons why they are better for all divers, but until all instructors start to move with the times, we'll always have this problem.
