SM Wing -- Characteristics?

Having been given a taste of SM using a Nomad, I'm getting more curious about it. IF I wanted to DIY a cold water rig (one of the reasons it intrigues me is for local diving, not caves), I'd need a fair amount of lift (my 40 lb doubles wing is barely enough for double 100s and a 40).

So, assuming I'd want at least 45 lbs of lift in a cold water SM rig, what should the wing look like? Since there doesn't need to be a spot for the tanks, one doesn't need it to be horse shoe or donut shaped -- it can just be a bladder (aka an MSR hydration bladder for example) -- but should it be shaped? That is, would it be better if the bladder had a "big shoulder" to provide more lift towards the head -- or should it just be even -- or should it be bigger at the base to provide more lift low (which might be about the middle of the tanks).

And is anyone making/selling SM Wings for cold water use that are actually designed solely for SM?

You want more lift towards the base since that's where the bulk of the weight is in SM. You also need to have a wing with tabs along the perimeter to it can be tied down and kept from tacoing. although a hydration bladder would work for smaller, lighter cylinders, I don't think you'll find one that can provide 45+ lbs of lift. The first time I did a dive in SM was with an OMS harness and Oxycheq wing. It worked fine, except the tacoing.

Dive Rite and Oxycheq both sell their SM wings without the other components.

The Nomad wing is 60 lbs . . . I know with backmount wings, you want to avoid too much lift, because they taco and are hard to vent. Is this not a problem with sidemount wings, because they are tabbed down? And why is the Nomad wing made with a large center panel, when there are no tanks to sit on it?

Another question is about venting -- with a backmount wing, you can vent in a vertical position from the inflator hose, or in a feet-down position from the butt dump. If you switch the inflator hose and dump, you can easily dump when horizontal or head-up, but given the way you secure your inflator, how do you vent if you are feet up? (That could be VERY important for a drysuit diver in open water.)

you can vent feet up the same way you vent if you're head up in doubles, it's difficult, but possible. I haven't had issues with my drysuit and was hovering upsidedown with HP120's in the 50* water yesterday with no problem.

The Nomad wing has the center panel so it can sit underneath the transpac without tacoing. You could do sidemount in a normal poodle jacket if you wanted to, no worries about anything.
You can buy a fully rigged nomad for $550 brand new from Cave Adventurers so not sure why you'd want to DIY a rig, but the Nomad wing is ideal for a lot of stuff. If you're in cold water and want to back mount your deco bottles you can do that. Stick an AL80 on your back for deco, or independent doubles for deco *don't recommend that, but you can*.

If the Nomad is adjusted properly it really is an incredibly streamlined rig. People gripe about it's drag, but a lot of those people have double pockets on their drysuit which kills any streamlining you have in a suit. Same with doubles, the way the hoses are routed creates a nice dam for water and adds a fair bit of drag, same with any wing wrap. I love my Nomad for diving doubles because there is 0 wing wrap and it's not hard to switch the inflator and dump back and forth as needed.

If you're going to DIY a rig, get a poodle jacket and stick bungees and a butt plate on it if you want that kind of lift. There is no other wing out there that works as well as the Nomad wing for heavy lift rigs.

The other thing you can do with the inflators is just run them straight up like normal and hide em in the epaulets. I switch them, but since your regulator runs up to the back of your neck anyway, you can just run a really long inflator hose up and over behind your shoulder and down like normal.

TSandM:

The Nomad wing is 60 lbs . . . I know with backmount wings, you want to avoid too much lift, because they taco and are hard to vent. Is this not a problem with sidemount wings, because they are tabbed down?

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Exactly. While the newer Nomad wings have 60 lbs of lift, that is only if they are allowed to fully inflate. With the way the wing is secured, the lift is scaled back a bit. Dive rite even markets the EXP as being adjustable between 35 lbs and 60 lbs of lift.

And why is the Nomad wing made with a large center panel, when there are no tanks to sit on it?

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Sidemount wings are positioned under the harness rather than on top of it.

Another question is about venting -- with a backmount wing, you can vent in a vertical position from the inflator hose, or in a feet-down position from the butt dump. If you switch the inflator hose and dump, you can easily dump when horizontal or head-up, but given the way you secure your inflator, how do you vent if you are feet up? (That could be VERY important for a drysuit diver in open water.)

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Because the bulk of the weight is centered along your body, going into a feet up position is very difficult to do. In almost 4 years of diving sidemount, I've yet to have a problem like that.

saxplayer1004:

There is no other wing out there that works as well as the Nomad wing for heavy lift rigs.

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Have you tried all the other wings??

What wings have you tried?

Lamar indicated at a SM clinic that the Nomad development started with smaller wings, and the first Nomad wing was a 50 pound wing, but it also was not adequate for some types of diving as the wing is not really able to expand to it's full capacity, because, as Rob notes, the wing runs under the harness and bungees, and the wing is tabbed down to control the shape and to prevent it from tacoing. The end result was a 60 pound wing on the Nomad that in practice is probably only giving a maximum of 40-50 pounds when everything is in place and adjusted.

I do see Peter's point on the question of the large center plate on the Nomad harness. That's an artifact of it growing out of the Transpac harness, but part of it is due to the desire to keep the vertical profile fairly flat. That is accomplished on the Nomad by having a standard shaped wing (evolved from the Trek and Rec wings) and then attaching the lower ends to the waist belt, keeping the front portion under the shoulder staps and using tabs and bungees on the midel portion in addition to the tank bungees holding it down.

Andrew Georgitsis is taking a slightly different approach with his sidemount/monkey diving harness in that the harness is primarily located in the small of the back and is triangle shaped, with the pointy end extending up to a point between the base of the shoulder blades. This keeps the buoyancy located where it is needed.

I have also seen the third prototype from another company (kept nameless at the developer's request) that is also seeking to develop a wing that has the lift biased toward the lower body with no air anywhere near the shoulders. My impression was that the 4th prototype would probably depart from the traditional perimeter design and would also be a bladder along the lines of what AG is doing.

When I bought my Nomad the guy I bought it from threw in a nearly new Rec Wing as well. I placed a very slightly modified Oxycheq travel plate over it and created a "Fauxmad". Same basic idea and given the origin of the Nomad wing, it is a very easy DIY project to complete. But unless you already have a wing, buying a Nomad is probably more cost ffective.

In any case, the harness, wing and bungees operate as a system and any of them impacts the other two and that can lengthen the learning curve if you don't have access to an instructor or mentor. And some issues you just encounter when new items come along. For example, I like ring bungees for carrying tanks fair distances to off the road sinks. But they don't really pull the tanks far enough forward to get the right trim (especially if diving wet) - regardless of where the bands are positioned, so a slight mod is needed to ensure the tanks ride properly.

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Like Rob I have not had issues with dumping a Sorenson inflator modified Nomad in feet up positions, and I have tried to aggravate the situation in a dry suit. In part it is where the tanks are located. However a large part of it is also due to the wing being under pressure from the bungees, tabs and tank bungees, so that regardless of where he inflator is located, it dumps gas when the button is pushed on the inflator dump or when the dump cord is activated. By the time the pressure in the wing is too low to dump gas, excess lift is just not a problem

I have to admit, having played with the setup -- you'd have to work at getting feet up enough to be unable to correct it. But I come into this from a tradition of considering the worst possible scenario and being prepared for it, and it did occur to me that IF you ended up with air-filled feet, you'd have a hard time correcting, because you can't quickly vent from that position.

Dive-aholic:

Dive Rite and Oxycheq both sell their SM wings without the other components.

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Hollis too.

Hollis wing is a complete doughnut (oval), which I find is less prone to trapping air as compared to a horseshoe shape wing. IN their sidemount rig they use a 52lb wing.

I've experimented with DR's travel, trek, rec, and classic wings, and threw a buddies DSS torus 52 on there.
Travel was too narrow and didn't have enough lift.
Trek was the right shape, but again not big enough, and not wide enough to provide enough lift under the harness
Rec worked, but would have liked it to be tapered a bit more
Classic was too wide and didn't sit right under the plate.

None of them extended far enough down to balance the air or if they did were too thick at the top. A lot of the other wings out there are great, the one on the Armadillo, the new one from UTD, but I wouldn't dive them with heavy steel tanks for cold water diving. Especially not in open ocean. I have my Nomad wing bungeed down pretty tight since I don't use hardly any air in the wing, and with it tied down it's realistically in the mid 40's as far as lift goes, but any wing is going to lose some percentage of it's full lift when it's in the water.

There are things about the Nomad that I'd like to change, one of which is more tie down options.