A drag issue : to bungee wings or not to bungee

[Garth]

There's no "if" about it.

okay sir. I do apologize. But I don't believe that it was me who was trashing your gear rather it was you who was trashing mine by saying you wont dive with someone who uses a bungee wing.

 

[Garth]

Bungee wings just scream out to me that someone either doesn't know how to properly weight themselves so they're compensating by a 120# wing and then bungee'ing it up to control all that fabric -- or else they never got past the skills issue of being able to dump a non-bungee wing.

I'm not interested in the arguments about how you're going to die using one, or the unanswerable hydrodynamic question, and while the auto-deflation is a little concerning, the overriding issue is that it is a clear gear solution to a skills issue.

Sorry, but if you show up to the dive site with a bungee wing, I'm going to draw a negative impression from that. Hopefully that doesn't hurt your feelings too badly, but its not my job to agree with all your gear choices.

No hard feelings dude. I personally would like a smaller wing. The more my diving has progressed the more I realized that my wing is way to big. Believe it or not I have gone from the comfort harness thing to just a backplate and webbing. I plan on downsizing to a smaller wing with dual inflation. But to dissapoint you I plan on getting the oms tesseract which is bungee forward and will not push gas out of your BC like the old ones.

 

[Tortuga68]

Sorry Garth but you're gonna die and none of the cool kids will dive with you

 

[cool_hardware52]

That's just another straw man, with exaggeration to boot. The debate is bungee vs non-bungee, so how is the size of the wing or weighting relevant?

Let's see if I can help.

A doubles diver who is carrying the minimum ballast necessary to complete the dive can use a wing with the following capacity:

Weight of the divers back gas + the minimum buoyancy of their drysuit + 2-3 lbs.

Typical example of 2 x 100's + a 24 lbs buoyant suit, ~16 lbs of air or nitrox +24 + 3 = 43 lbs. A wing in the 45-50 lbs is a reasonable choice.

That's a modest sized doubles wing.

OTOH if the diver is grossly overweighted, to the extent that they actually need the 70-100 lbs wing to stay at or get back to the surface then bungees start to look like a good idea. 100 lbs wings are huge.

IMO It's exactly this type of gear selection that has contributed to the stereotypical bungeed wing user as someone to keep at arms length.

Tobin

 

[LiteHedded]

Well my point is that I dive a Bare drysuit. The next thing you guys will likely say that it is going to kill me due to the fact that it is not the best equipment on the market. Maybe I may perish because of the lack of zip-seals.

no one's going to say that. think it through.
also, put a shirt on.

 

[jtivat]

That's just another straw man, with exaggeration to boot. The debate is bungee vs non-bungee, so how is the size of the wing or weighting relevant?

The bungee's are there to make the profile of the wing smaller why not just start with a smaller wing. There are not many dive profiles that need 94LBS. of lift.

 

[Tortuga68]

Let's see if I can help.

A doubles diver who is carrying the minimum ballast necessary to complete the dive can use a wing with the following capacity:

Weight of the divers back gas + the minimum buoyancy of their drysuit + 2-3 lbs.

Typical example of 2 x 100's + a 24 lbs buoyant suit, ~16 lbs of air or nitrox +24 + 3 = 43 lbs. A wing in the 45-50 lbs is a reasonable choice.

That's a modest sized doubles wing.

OTOH if the diver is grossly overweighted, to the extent that they actually need the 70-100 lbs wing to stay at or get back to the surface then bungees start to look like a good idea. 100 lbs wings are huge.

IMO It's exactly this type of gear selection that has contributed to the stereotypical bungeed wing user as someone to keep at arms length.

Tobin

That would all be very relevant if we were discussing the lift required; but it's got nothing to do with bungee vs non-bungee

No-one in this thread has said they need a 100# wing. And you can get 45# bungeed wings

There's a photo of my wing earlier in the thread. Yes it's a 94# wing. I dive with a SS backplate and AL80s and a 3mm shorty. No weights

Am I overweighted?

 

[Tortuga68]

The bungee's are there to make the profile of the wing smaller why not just start with a smaller wing. There are not many dive profiles that need 94LBS. of lift.

Again, what has that got to do with bungee vs non-bungee?

 

[LiteHedded]

There's a photo of my wing earlier in the thread. Yes it's a 94# wing. I dive with a SS backplate and AL80s and a 3mm shorty. No weights

good lord man. why?

 

[lamont]

That's just another straw man, with exaggeration to boot. The debate is bungee vs non-bungee, so how is the size of the wing or weighting relevant?

that is a path to bungee wings.

i've witnessed this kind of idiocy and it begins with bad buoyancy control, it leads to a 120# wing, when the diver realizes that they've got a ton of fabric flapping all over the place, they bungee the wing. this was in a tech instructor teaching PADI wreck penetration courses.

and i haven't just read about that online, i've been in the water with someone going down this route and shook my head and said a silent prayer for the student that he was instructing...

that is not the only reason to bungee wing, but i used a complicated thought there with an "or else" clause -- attempting to twist my statement into one where *all* bungee wing users are using 120# wings to compensate for poor buoyancy control is a fallacy. i never stated that.