ScubaRon:I just got my hands on a new Aqualung catalog and it prominently lists SeaQuest's new Fusion BC. It is a hybrid between a tradional and a back-inflated BC, kind of like the Mares Morphos and Dragonfly. Pricing is supposedly around $750.
It is probably too soon, but this board has surprised me before: has anyone tried one of these yet?
ScubaRon
I'm new to the wonderful world of SCUBA, so you may want to take that into consideration when reading what I have to say about the Fusion BC.
After getting certified I made the decision to buy all my essential dive gear instead of renting it. And the main reason for that was that I wanted to always dive with the same gear so that operating it would become routine and automatic which would make it easier to enjoy my dives. (much like it's much easier to drive a car once you figured out where all the switches are and the radio works, so you don't have to look for them while heading down the freeway)
Anyway, I decided on the SeaQuest Fusion BC and I love it. The inflator is located on the lower left side of the BC and works like a charm. To deflate the BC you use one or more of the three dumpvalves. They are located on the top right, and bottom left and right with pull cord to the front of the BC for all three of them. The amount of air relased from these valves is very easy to control and they have built in check valves to prevent water form entering the bladder.
The BC is very comfortable and bouyancy was very easy to control.
Theoretically you should be able to dump all the air in just about any position, but i found that to not be completely true. However this only happend if there was very little air in the BC and was easily solved by raising the right shoulder just slightly.
The integrated weight system works very well. The weight pockets are easily installed while wearing the BC and also dump easily.
Two more things, it is rather pricey, but I'm not giving it back adn most important of all, no annoying inflator hose!.
olij