Bungeed wings clearly add stability to a diver wearing twin tanks.
They do not, unless the diver is wearing an oversized wing that traps gas.
The DIR organ grinders usually spout that Bungeed wings create unacceptable drag and shouldnt be used- this is total rubbish. Most divers dive in the sea and as a rule swim with the prevailing current.
Most divers don't dive "in the sea" most dive at a given site and do want to follow a reverse path and will be swimming into the current for part of it. Only way to get away from this completely is to nail slack perfectly or to simply do a drift dive with a live boat.
Anyway, that's not why you don't use bungee wings, auto deflation is the bigger issue on top of the simple fact that if you have properly sized wings and a balanced rig you don't need bungees.
Their other argument is that bunged wings deflate quickly if holed underwater. In my experience it is fairly difficult for a wing or BCD to hold any air for long if punctured, with or without bungees.
I've both lost my dump valve and pulled my LP inflator off and in both cases the wing trapped gas fine.
Dual bladdered wings are a much better alternative to buoyancy back-up, the DIR approach of a single wing and a drysuit to offer back-up buoyancy only works with aluminium tanks and is virtual suicide with steel tanks. In their defence DIR divers are told to only wear ali tanks as long as they only dive in warm Florida caves this might work. If however you dive outside Florida in the proper (cold) sea with steel tanks, do your self a favour and get a dual bladder wing. I would love to see a DIR guru compromise his safety by ascending from depth with an over blown drysuit leaking in cold water as the neck seal billows.
Dual bladdered wings give you a bigger problem with failures. If you leave both inflators hooked up you don't know which one is leaking if it fails. If you leave it unhooked then you have to hook it back up, and if you don't have a gear check for it being unhooked it can fail. If you don't test it, it may not function when you need it (jammed up with saltwater). LP inflator failures happen more commonly than catastrophic wing failures.
Why are all DIR drysuits black in colour, the same as there fins and wings???
Somebody trying to do something correctly should wear brightly coloured equipment to aid being seen surely??
This is obviously garbage, as all the red pictures of JJ and Casey in the WKPP over the past 7+ years show.
DIR cave divers are notoriously bad at planning dives in ocean/tidal conditions they should consider wear pink drysuits to aid the rescue services
Yes, except for everyone diving in the PNW where some sites can only be dove a few days a year.
While we are on the subject of wings lets discuss back-plates and harnesses with the ubiquitous DIR continuous loop webbing. When I did some Florida cave training the instructor kept waffling about the need for having no quick releases. The instructor had heard some yarns where the buckles had broken and caused the tanks to fall of the victims backs and they died hideous tortuous deaths etc. Total bull**** is all I could offer back to this sheep. If a clip breaks nothing will happen
nothing at all the waist band will keep the tanks in place . In my 12 years of full time diving I have never seen a harness clip break underwater and only twice on the surface both times on rubbish quality recreational BCDs. A continuous webbing harness is difficult to get off at the best of times even at the surface. If the diver cannot remove the equipment themselves then the only alternative for the buddy is a knife or scissors routine. Continuous loop harnesses are just more unnecessary bull**** doctrine from the DIR camp. Make life easier for yourself and get a breakaway on your harness (only one is necessary)
First of all you shouldn't have a harness cinched up so tight that you can't chicken wing. I also don't plan on optimizing for someone needing to cut me out of my gear -- I expect I'll be dead in that case. In that case a single piece webbing is completely functional for every situation that I really need it to work, it will not get broken and scratch a dive if a tank falls on it on the surface, and there's zero chance of an issue underwater, and my dive buddy carries a knife so there's a way to get it off of me if I am dead.
The regulators promoted by DIR divers are purely chosen to satisfy US sponsorship deals. The constant hose length arguments are simply ways of increasing revenue for dive centres as custom length hoses are more expensive than stock.
This is only an issue with a lousy LDS, so buy them off the internet.
The DIR branded long hoses I bought recently were clearly very poor quality lightweight hose and lasted as little as 4 months. If you want to do something correctly use a brightly coloured long hose also, they are much easier to see in bad light or low visibility.
Bright color is fine, just make sure it doesn't float and flop.
Diving with loose second stages is more suicidal antic than useful technique. I have seen idiots trying to emulate their heroes diving with loose hoses and they looked very un-cool when the 2nd stage unscrewed completely and left long hoses snaking though the water pissing out gas.
And GI3 backed off on this idea as well. Its about 10 years out of date.
Yesss...a high performance reg on an argon bottle - pure brillianceDIR divers always seem to strangely favour high performance regulators on deco bottles
more nonsense aimed at making dive centres cash in lieu of safety. When a high performance regulator free flows you lose more gas. High performance regulators are more likely to fail as they have more knobs and whistles in both 1st and 2nd stages. Sensible divers should use low performance piston regulators on deco bottles, plus they are cheaper both to buy and service, and ultimately safer to use with oxygen.
I'd still like lower WOB on deco bottles since I want to breathe easily and clear gas out.
When I see a DIR diver with a high performance regulator on an Argon bottle - I laugh out loud. Apart from the increased failure risk, the gas flows faster and therefore cooler than a low performance model. On a similar note - forget argon bottles, they just show how inexperienced you are. Inflate drysuit with weakest deco mix. I would estimate that 99% of DIR divers dive in warm water, so why O why do they wear drysuit's inflated with Argon?
That's just completely ignorant. Go check Chantelle's ice diving pics.
I really love the SMB design mandated by DIR instructors. Its a fairly standard SMB that has a BCD inflator attached for easy inflation. GIT had an oft quoted phrase of convoluted bull**** related to equipment design. If the inflation method of removing your drysuit inflator hose, attach it to a SMB to inflate it doesnt qualify for the title convoluted bull**** then nothing does. Imagine being dragged screaming to the surface with your drysuit hose jammed (as often happened with early models or even the latest versions that have a degree of verdigris build-up).
Which is why GUE instructors teach orally inflating a closed bag, and I know that one GUE instructor prefers open circuit bags and inflating with exhaust bubbles.
What can possibly be DIR about using Imperial measurement??? The metric system is clearly superior for depth measurement and all planning calculations. Probably the next thing DIR agency gurus will advocate is that all proper DIR divers must write their dive-plans in Aramaic or something equally as useless as Feet and Inches.
Which is just idiotic. American DIR divers dive imperial because we're used to it, the rest of the DIR world dives metric. And every DIR instructor I've met expresses a preference for metric.
Standard Gases - might seem initially a good idea where all divers within a team use the same gases, the choices for DIR divers are
33-45m 21/35 Weakness - Needs deco gas to decompress from fully or huge quantities of back gas - EAN or Air better suited to this depth
air at 45m is narcotic and interferences with short term memory acquisition and I'd rather remember my dives clearly.
48-60m 18/45 Weakness - MUST HAVE 2 DECO GASES Impossible to deco on back gas - 21/20 or Air better suited to this range in ocean
the only way you wind up deco'ing on backgas alone is if you've lost your deco gas and your buddy. DIR divers try not be that much of a cluster.
63-75m 15/55 Weakness - MUST HAVE 2 DECO GASES Impossible to deco on back gas - 18/30 better suited to this range in ocean
78-121m 10/70 Weakness - TOO MUCH RANGE. Mix is wholly inappropriate at 78-120m. 10/70 will give very long deco bordering suicidal in cold
water.
that's funny given the dives around here using 10/70 on the admiral sampson.
Trimix divers should be encouraged to breathe optimal mixtures during deep dives not breathe these ridiculous standard
mixtures that often contain massive helium fractions such as these.
"massive helium" is just a cost issue, and it keeps heads clear and lets you remember.
DIR HQ must know that 99.99% of divers are not going into any overhead environments where low END's
maybe more appropriate.
yes, nobody DIR dives inside caves or wrecks or in flow or in cold or in ice or in current, where lowering ENDs might be useful... not.
Low END's have very serious implications regarding DCS and ascent speeds,
yes, you need to blow off your deep stops or all your deco and be competent.
not to mention
the heavy thermal complications.
high helium mixes don't cool a diver off due to breathing the mix, that's just false (it does feel warmer to switch onto a nitrogen mix but that is due to capillaries blowing open just like taking a shot of alcohol -- which makes you colder in the long run on the nitrogen mix).
Maybe experience and higher END's are better suited for dives to 80metres+ rather than masses
of Helium! Remember...Helium wont help you control your drysuit or wing bouyancy, or send up an SMB - Practise instead.
screwed if you do, screwed if you don't.
usually people slam on DIR divers because they spend too much time practicing.
