Soft plate BP/W vs. hard plate vs. back inflate BCDs

[geoff w]

I was unaware that tropical destinations don't have steel tanks, silly me...I don't get out much I guess.
Right, well that changes everything then, by all means use the heavy plate, helps with the 3 lbs positive of the alumi and with a 3 mil there's enough positive floatation to counter the neg 3.
I personally would love the opportunity to dive in warm water with nothing but swim trunks and no BC. I'd use a plain plastic backpack and a AL80. God, wouldn't that be a treat!
We certainly don't get to do that around here.

Try going from a steel HP80 to an Al80! The HP80 weighs a little less on land, and is at least 6.5 lbs more negatively buoyant in salt water. Here in So Cal with a 7mm full suit, hooded vest 5mm gloves and booties, with my 6 lb backplate and HP80 tank I dive with 2 lbs lead (although can just barely descend with no weights). When we were in Palau, with a lightweight 2.5 lb steel backplate and Al80, wearing a 1 mm suit, I still needed 4 lbs of lead. With my 6 lb backplate I could have probably dived with no lead, but the DiveRite XT Lite backplate looks so cool, as well as being so functional, I had to get it for warm water diving. Definitely helps to take almost 4 lbs out of the checked luggage

I'd love to find warm water tropical dive operators that regularly have steel tanks. From talking to several, it's a matter of economics (Al80s are cheaper), availability, maintenance (Al80s can sit in salt water all day every day), and less worries about vacation divers sucking a tank dry and getting salt water inside the tank

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

If you can float with an empty wing and a full tank, how do you hold a safety stop with a near empty tank?

I don't know how, magic I guess. I've been diving with no BC for a long time now.
It's all in the weighting and breathing.

 

[KevinNM]

Btw, if you like the dimension i3, I have one that works perfectly. Make me an offer, as I have to pay off my Halcyon bp/w.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I have some experience with hiking a backpack. The more weight I can get OFF my shoulders and snugged up around my waist the easier it is to carry the weight. A good (hiking) backpack has decent padding in the lower back (as well as other areas). The idea is to keep the weight low and supported by your pelvis and not put all the weight on your back. You want a scuba rig that will ride comfortably on your hips, as much as possible.

For this reason alone, if I was hiking a long distance with a tank, I would want to use a weightbelt rather than integrated weights or heavy plate.

My advice is to also try a rubber freedive type weightbelt, the comfort this belt provides will be quite noticeable.

If I were hiking long distances with a tank, i would want padded shoulder pads and a cross chest strap for stability and comfort when hiking down and back to the shore. Pretty much ANY configuration is going to work in the water, but you need to pick a configuration that works best for hiking and diving.

Somewhere I got a photo of me riding my bicycle to the dive site while wearing a coldwater suit, 24 lbs of lead and the whole scuba unit, so I have done some experimenting with different configurations. Getting to and from the water in a comfortable way takes some thought.

 

[akivisuals]

Btw, if you like the dimension i3, I have one that works perfectly. Make me an offer, as I have to pay off my Halcyon bp/w.

Sorry but there's little chance that I'll ever buy an i3 again. Even if I did, I wouldn't be buying another used one based on my current experiences with it. Thanks for the offer though!

---------- Post added February 2nd, 2015 at 01:44 AM ----------

I have some experience with hiking a backpack. The more weight I can get OFF my shoulders and snugged up around my waist the easier it is to carry the weight. A good (hiking) backpack has decent padding in the lower back (as well as other areas). The idea is to keep the weight low and supported by your pelvis and not put all the weight on your back. You want a scuba rig that will ride comfortably on your hips, as much as possible.

For this reason alone, if I was hiking a long distance with a tank, I would want to use a weightbelt rather than integrated weights or heavy plate.

This is the reason why I was leaning towards the Transpac XT but after talking to several local divers on a BP/W I think that will probably be fine for me. I might wind up getting a back pad or a padded harness for it though to help with those cliff hikes at PV.

 

[stuartv]

This is the reason why I was leaning towards the Transpac XT but after talking to several local divers on a BP/W I think that will probably be fine for me. I might wind up getting a back pad or a padded harness for it though to help with those cliff hikes at PV.

You can always get some shoulder pads that attach via a sleeve with Velcro closure, so you can put them on for the hike down to the shore and then take them off and leave them ashore while you dive.

Like these:

Aerostich Shoulder Pad :: Aerostich/RiderWearHouse Motorcycle Jackets, Suits, Clothing, & Gear

I have one of these for my Courier bag (from the same place) and it is quite beefy.

 

[tbone1004]

better to just buy the neoprene pads from Dive Rite, they're pretty cheap, but the DR Deluxe harness with neoprene sleeves is actually very very good for hiking around and if you have exposure protection you don't really need anything other than the neoprene sleeves and that is really just to protect your exposure protection from the hard edge of the webbing

 

[Dave616]

better to just buy the neoprene pads from Dive Rite, they're pretty cheap, but the DR Deluxe harness with neoprene sleeves is actually very very good for hiking around and if you have exposure protection you don't really need anything other than the neoprene sleeves and that is really just to protect your exposure protection from the hard edge of the webbing

DGX has a the Dive Rite pair listed at the bottom of the page here for $12.95.

 

[akivisuals]

Try going from a steel HP80 to an Al80! The HP80 weighs a little less on land, and is at least 6.5 lbs more negatively buoyant in salt water. Here in So Cal with a 7mm full suit, hooded vest 5mm gloves and booties, with my 6 lb backplate and HP80 tank I dive with 2 lbs lead (although can just barely descend with no weights). When we were in Palau, with a lightweight 2.5 lb steel backplate and Al80, wearing a 1 mm suit, I still needed 4 lbs of lead. With my 6 lb backplate I could have probably dived with no lead, but the DiveRite XT Lite backplate looks so cool, as well as being so functional, I had to get it for warm water diving. Definitely helps to take almost 4 lbs out of the checked luggage

I'd love to find warm water tropical dive operators that regularly have steel tanks. From talking to several, it's a matter of economics (Al80s are cheaper), availability, maintenance (Al80s can sit in salt water all day every day), and less worries about vacation divers sucking a tank dry and getting salt water inside the tank

I also dive with an HP80 in SoCal with a 7mm suit, 5/3 hooded vest (when it's winter), gloves, boots, etc. How much lift do you typically need for that kind of neoprene? I'm 5'4" and 145lbs. Would a 30# wing be too much, just enough, or too little?

---------- Post added February 16th, 2015 at 02:15 AM ----------

So after doing a lot of reading and research I think I'll be going down the BP/W road. As for my earlier thoughts about the soft backplate designs, I think I've heard enough pros about steel backplates to want to go that route over the soft designs. Are there specific brands that are better than others? The Halcyon looks nice and I like the idea of the cinch straps but it's a bit pricey. Can you put another brand wing like one from DiveRite, Hollis, or DSS on it? Also, what are the differences in steel plates? They all look fairly similar. Would a sub $100 Hollis or DiveRite plate be that much inferior to the DSS or the Halcyon?

I'm also trying to decide on whether to get a "backpack style" harness like the Hollis Elite or the DiveRite Transplate instead of the Halcyon cinch straps or a regular hogarthian harness. I like the idea of a backpack style but many here seem to recommend the plain hogarthian style harnesses. I don't have plans at the moment of doing serious tech diving. Most of my dives are rec dives at reasonably shallow depths. What are the drawbacks to a backpack style harness?

Thanks for all the replies btw! They've been very helpful!

 

[tbone1004]

there's no real drawbacks to that style of harness, they are just different, more complex than they really need to be for most people but if you're doing a lot of shore diving where you have a ways to go it may be more comfortable. Try the one piece harness and if you don't like it, you're not out a lot of money and Northeast Scuba Supply usually has the Transplates pretty cheap. I don't dive a one piece harness, I learned on one, have a few hundred dives on them and over a thousand hours in a pool on one, but I prefer the Dive Rite deluxe harness because I need a chest strap. My body shape does not work well with the standard backplate design and one piece harness due to my shoulders and chest being larger than my waist. Beautiful in the water, lose circulation in both arms very quickly on land, no bueno. The deluxe harness is still a far cry from the Transplate though and doesn't have any quick releases. I do have that style harness on my Transpac which I use if I have to hike around with doubles *super rare, but sometimes you have a long trek down to the boat, and it isn't worth switching over to the hard plate once down there, and it is the harness on my Nomad for sidemount, and I will still go back to the one piece harness in the pool since the Halcyon Eclipse is the rig that we have to teach in. I would prefer to be able to use all one piece harnesses all around.

One of the biggest deciding factors is what company you want your money to support.
Scubapro-massive multibillion dollar corporation-Jarden-nothing to my knowledge is made here
Aqualung/Apeks-slight smaller massive corporation-nothing to my knowledge is made here
Hollis-similarly sized to Aqualung massive corporation-AUP-don't believe anything is made here
Dive Rite-pretty small US based company in FL-wings are made in NY, plates are made somewhere in New England, used to be MA but I think it's CT now
Hog-tiny company run out of Georgia, there is talk of them bringing wing production back to the US, but as of right now it is all done overseas
Halcyon-basically run out of a garage- small company in FL-all made in FL
Deep Sea Supply-same as Halcyon but in Pasadena-all made in CA

DSS and Halcyon do have higher quality backplates than the others, JJ and Tobin take great pride in the quality of workmanship in their plates, and while Halcyons work better with doubles because that is their primary target, Tobins plates are superior on single tanks for most people, he also has a bunch of different size plates which may be beneficial to you since you do not fit the normal 6'0" 200lb mold that the current plates were manufactured around, the HP80's are also very short tanks so you may need the shorter plate to have proper tank positioning. You might very well need a regular size plate, but having size options might be worth a few extra bucks. Deep Sea Supply also has a cinch type adapter for their plates, but a properly fitting one piece harness is actually very loose in the shoulder straps so you usually slip down and out from it, very rare you'd actually have to use it. In true emergency you just cut yourself out and replace the $10 in webbing.

Dive Rite standardized the current backplate design back in the 80's, along with the bolt spacing, so they all look basically the same. Same basic size, same basic shape, holes are in the same general spots, the differences are in how well they are finished, Halcyons plates are absolutely gorgeous to look at, and the big one is the angle of the bend in the plate. Halcyons tend to be a bit tighter angle to fit doubles more securely, DSS makes flatter plates that are better for single tank diving as they move the plate closer to your back.

You can certainly go the cheap route and the quality is certainly there, but I am generally ok with spending a few bucks more and supporting the small guys that are really doing the innovation and standing behind their work. Halcyon is very uptight about their reputation in the industry and they stand behind their products as much as everyone except maybe Shearwater in the industry, you'll get tremendous local support from Tobin if you need it, though with those two it is highly unlikely. Dive Rite has always been known for their customer support and it is true to this day, you gamble with the big companies, it's a pretty straight shot with the small guys.