halcyon 18lbs or 27lbs

Most of my diving is done in warm water, 3mm wetsuit which pioneer wing should I go for? Is there a significant difference in performace if i chose one over the other.

How do i tell which is which just but looking at it? I might be getting one second hand and he told me it's a 27lbs. How do i check? I've seen a 18lbs before but i dont remember how big it is. Does someone have the measurements of the wing? Just want to make sure i dont get cheated.

i borrowed a 18lbs to dive and i didnt need weights. Should i take a weight down when i try out the 27lbs on my first dive? want to make sure i can go down.

It depends on the tanks you are using. Just because they are aluminum doesn't tell much. go to http://www.subaqua.co.uk/cgi-bin/cylinder-buoyancy.cgi?units=metric and see if you can plug in the details of your tank and then see the buoyancy charecteristics of the tanks you will be using then you can match the appropriate wing for the tanks buoyancy.

The 18lb wing often referred as the bat wing is not in production anymore. A lot of people liked them becuase of the streamlining and the characterictics for the tanks they were using, but most people now a days use the pioneer 27 for warm water aluminum tank diving as it tends to meet the most common tank buoyancy characteristics.

gyselle once bubbled...
Most of my diving is done in warm water, 3mm wetsuit which pioneer wing should I go for? Is there a significant difference in performace if i chose one over the other.

How do i tell which is which just but looking at it? I might be getting one second hand and he told me it's a 27lbs. How do i check? I've seen a 18lbs before but i dont remember how big it is. Does someone have the measurements of the wing? Just want to make sure i dont get cheated.

i borrowed a 18lbs to dive and i didnt need weights. Should i take a weight down when i try out the 27lbs on my first dive? want to make sure i can go down.

Click to expand...

The 27lbs wing are round/donut shaped, ie. the bottom of the aircell is connected.

The 18lbs wing bottom part is NOT connected and they looked like a miniature version of the Explorer wing.

Apart from the bottom of the wing, the wing look almost identical, except the newer halcyon 27lbs wing have tanks slots & single tank adapter built into them. I have not seen a new 18lbs wing, so can't say anything.

When using the 18lbs wing, you'll have to get used to shifting the air from left to right as they are not connected at the bottom like the 27lbs wing.

For streamlining, there is actually minimal difference as the additional 9lbs of lift is located at the bottom of the tank, which don't really interfere with your strealining, a bit MAYBE (assuming you're horizontally trimmed)

Assuming your other equipment / environment do not change, I don't see a reason why you need an extra weight, as you'll deflate the wing during the dive, the wing only fully inflate on surface

The 27# wing is the only one of the two mentioned that is still in production. I dive 27# for single 100 steels and it works great. ZG

Thanks very much for all the information. Have decided to get the 27lbs one!