fuzzybabybunny
Contributor
I'm a newbie to sidemount. A year ago I dove 20-some times with an AL80 slung on my side cobbled together with hardware store stuff and attached to a standard backmount BCD with another AL80.
I do mostly solo dives and I really enjoyed having the extra tank mounted against my side, so I figure that if I'm going to be doing dives with two tanks, I might as well have both be properly sidemounted.
I travel a lot and my current kit is an older Zeagle Express Tech Deluxe with 19kg bladder that only weighs around 2.4 kg and packs down really small and flat.
I read a thread here where people try to convert the Express Tech (and similar backmount systems) to sidemount with bad results, so I think that I'm unfortunately going to have to sell my Express Tech and just go all-in with sidemount, especially with my solo dives.
- The XDeep Stealth 2.0 Tec with 19kg bladder is 2.8kg, so a bit heavier than my Express Tech.
- The XDeep Stealth 2.0 Classic with 16kg bladder is 2.4kg, the same as my Express Tech.
- Are there any other BCDs that I should be looking at, and what are peoples' opinions on the XDeep stuff? I've never heard of them until I started looking into sidemount.
- When traveling I'm also going to be adding extra weight and bulk because I'll need to bring all the sidemount rigging stuff with me so that I can rig up the rental tanks. That's another weight consideration. With a typical backmount I can just plop in a rental tank and go with no additional rigging.
- Because of the above, are there any really lightweight and modular BCDs that allow you to switch easily between sidemount and backmount?
I do mostly solo dives and I really enjoyed having the extra tank mounted against my side, so I figure that if I'm going to be doing dives with two tanks, I might as well have both be properly sidemounted.
I travel a lot and my current kit is an older Zeagle Express Tech Deluxe with 19kg bladder that only weighs around 2.4 kg and packs down really small and flat.
I read a thread here where people try to convert the Express Tech (and similar backmount systems) to sidemount with bad results, so I think that I'm unfortunately going to have to sell my Express Tech and just go all-in with sidemount, especially with my solo dives.
- The XDeep Stealth 2.0 Tec with 19kg bladder is 2.8kg, so a bit heavier than my Express Tech.
- The XDeep Stealth 2.0 Classic with 16kg bladder is 2.4kg, the same as my Express Tech.
- Are there any other BCDs that I should be looking at, and what are peoples' opinions on the XDeep stuff? I've never heard of them until I started looking into sidemount.
- When traveling I'm also going to be adding extra weight and bulk because I'll need to bring all the sidemount rigging stuff with me so that I can rig up the rental tanks. That's another weight consideration. With a typical backmount I can just plop in a rental tank and go with no additional rigging.
- Because of the above, are there any really lightweight and modular BCDs that allow you to switch easily between sidemount and backmount?