looking to get my first bc help please?

I live in Jacksonville Beach and getting certified on the 13th of July. After certification i want to get my own bc and regulator. I will be diving in salt water 99% of the time. Any info you can offer would help because there will be two people buying one.

I'm in the BP+W crowd, as it is highly modular and customizable to every person's likes and dislikes. HOG has some amazing deals on harnesses, backplates, and wings.

If I were to get a regular BC though, it would probably be a Zeagle Ranger.

Welcome to ScubaBoard, lvxsurf.

You won't get much of a consensus here on a BC or regulator model, so it won't help you narrow your choices much. But there is a consensus that:
Good luck in your search. I would not buy anything without knowing its price at LeisurePro or ScubaToys.

In my tropical vacation diving, I am indifferent between my Deep Sea Supply BP/W and my ScubaPro Classic Sport. I dive expensive Atomic M1 regulators, which I love, but wouldn't recommend to a new diver if budget is at all a factor.

I live in your area and thought Id do more ocean dives but Jax/St Aug offshore is iffy so I gravitated to the springs and finally the caves. I started out with a Zeagle Ranger but moved on to BP and wing being more suited to tech diving. You might want to keep that in mind in case you do the same. Ive had several BC's and wings and have settled with a Diverite Nomad. Good luck!

lvxsurf:

I live in Jacksonville Beach and getting certified on the 13th of July. After certification i want to get my own bc and regulator. I will be diving in salt water 99% of the time. Any info you can offer would help because there will be two people buying one.

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I would advise the bp/wing as the best way tp proceed....however, your instructor may not like it if he/she has no experience with bp/wings--this usually because they have never used one, or know little about them. I would say this is not up to them, you will do what is best for you, and should not be forced to buy a bogus BC , only to have to buy a BP/wing 6 months later....And you should be getting your Open Water I training on the BP/wing, because that is the gear you would be diving with--and their are some notable differences....such as the long hose primary regulator you use for donating to an out of air diver, and the necklace reg back up you where on a bungie on your neck....with the standard vest bc, you have a short primary reg you breathe off of, and have a long, often dangling octopus reg which you would use for other divers if one went OOA. In fairness, the dangling octopus reg could be clipped, or stuffed, and oftewn is, but then if a diver near you has an emergency, you will not have 5 seconds to un-clip or unstuff..you will have a fraction of a second, which is why BP/Wing divers like the long hose primary--you see the problem of OOA happening, and you take the reg out of your mouth and thrust the reg to the out of air diver--instantly...the necklace reg is right under your chin, so you know where it is, and you have instant access to it as well.

The BP/Wing use is different as well. It is very easy to glide in perfect trim with a bp/wing. the custom fit will help with this, but this is also a pitfall of a bp/wing....You can't just grab a bp/wing and set it up yourself, without most likely doing it very wrong. It is not at all intuitive, on how you set up a bp/wing for yourself. The adjustments are very important, and in a perfect world, a long time bp/wing diver with a good mechanical awareness of how they got their perfect custom fit would help you...or you would have a GUE instructor do the custom fit for you...and that would be unlikely

You could get a couple of the DIR videos, and watch how the customization is done.... But a local shop, may very well have no one working there with the skills to set you up for a demo. If they do, then at minimum, the person saying they do dives a bp/wing themself, all or most of the time.

If you cant find someone that knows how to fit you, I think you are out of luck in trying to get a BP/wing at this time.

I agree with vladimir on this one. Try them all. Buy a mid to high priced reg- it will last a long time.

Lots of places will offer package deals. I went to scubatoys again the other day- they always seem to find a way to make a discounted package with whatever you decide to buy.

You may indeed like the BP&W- I do, but I don't think you HAVE to get certified wearing one. But I would recommend diving with one in the presence of someone experienced ap they can help you get it adjusted and stuff.

lvxsurf:

I live in Jacksonville Beach and getting certified on the 13th of July. After certification i want to get my own bc and regulator. I will be diving in salt water 99% of the time. Any info you can offer would help because there will be two people buying one.

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The advice I would offer is to wait until you're certified, then try out a couple of different types of BCs. You will probably be taught your OW class in a jacket style BC. The other two types to try would be a soft back-inflate style and hard backplate with 'wing' (just another name for the air bladder) and a simple webbing harness. Make sure you can do a couple of dives in each style; trying it on in the dive shop tells you nothing, unless it's an underwater dive shop.

For the regulator, any entry or mid level reg from major manufacturer will work fine, don't fall for the 'your life is worth it' crap that some salesmen shove down your throat. There are differences between mid-level and high end regulators, but they're subtle to most new divers and all of the regs offered by the long time successful companies, scubapro, aqualung, apeks, zeagle, oceanic, etc...are perfectly safe and will work very well for recreational diving. Make sure you will have access to quality service (evaluating the quality part is easier said than done, unfortunately). One perennial 'best buy' in regulators is the aqualung titan. The HOG regs seem to be a very good value and their approach to service is an improvement over the neanderthal policies of the bigger companies, but there's one caveat. Last I heard, HOG regs only come in DIN with a yoke adapter. Do not buy a DIN reg if you will be using yoke tanks; this includes 90% of the rentals in the U.S. and caribbean. If you're not sure, wait until you learn more abut the yoke/DIN issue.

halocline:

The advice I would offer is to wait until you're certified, then try out a couple of different types of BCs. You will probably be taught your OW class in a jacket style BC. The other two types to try would be a soft back-inflate style and hard backplate with 'wing' (just another name for the air bladder) and a simple webbing harness. Make sure you can do a couple of dives in each style; trying it on in the dive shop tells you nothing, unless it's an underwater dive shop.

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Excellent advice right there. The different styles of equipment (not just BCs) each have their own Pros/Cons that will vary depending on your individual needs, applications, environment. As such, any advice that claims "XYZ is the Best For Everything" can generally be disregarded as incomplete: you'll want to try certain things on your own, with the guidance of your local dive shop and the mentoring of local experienced divers.

For the regulator, any entry or mid level reg from major manufacturer will work fine, don't fall for the 'your life is worth it' crap that some salesmen shove down your throat. There are differences between mid-level and high end regulators, but they're subtle to most new divers and all of the regs offered by the long time successful companies, scubapro, aqualung, apeks, zeagle, oceanic, etc...are perfectly safe and will work very well for recreational diving.

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And this recreational diving perspective is important: the 'business side' reality of scuba diving is that 50+% of newly certified divers give up the sport within five (5) years, and easily 90% of divers never get into Technical diving or hardcore stuff that requires wearing doubles (twin tanks). As such, choice of a product that is optimized for this level is, statistically speaking, extreme overkill for the Novice...do your wallet a favor.

Make sure you will have access to quality service (evaluating the quality part is easier said than done, unfortunately). One perennial 'best buy' in regulators is the aqualung titan. The HOG regs seem to be a very good value and their approach to service is an improvement over the neanderthal policies of the bigger companies, but there's one caveat. Last I heard, HOG regs only come in DIN with a yoke adapter. Do not buy a DIN reg if you will be using yoke tanks; this includes 90% of the rentals in the U.S. and caribbean. If you're not sure, wait until you learn more abut the yoke/DIN issue.

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The best gear in the world will become 'junk' in short order (<2 years) if you can't get equally good service for it to be maintained. What can be a very simple, but nevertheless effective way to try to assess what's a good product choice for maintainability is to ask at your local dive shop who does the regulator servicing, and then ask this person what regulators he likes (and also ... hates) to service, and why. The basic idea is to know that a "great, but finnicky" regulator is going to be a maintenance headache to get that extra +0.1% of performance (and often at a steep price tag jump) ... which again, isn't at all important to any recreational diver, be they a new novice or a 20 year veteran.

Hope this helps,


-hh

On the regulator issue..... A friend gave me a Scubapro Mark 2 1st stage and R190 2nd stage back around 1989 or 90. It has never been serviced, only hose replacement and mouthpiece replacement. It works as well today as it did in 1990. This was the least expensive regulator Scubapro made back then ( I think) and the simplest. I did at least 200 or more dives to beyond 250 feet with it, so air flow is just fine for any need you will have.

Today I have it on my rig for diving single tanks....if I use my doubles, I have my doubles set up configured with the top end Scubapro gear, but the reality is that you could not really tell the difference in breathing, and the R190 is far more bullteproof--less likely to need to be serviced regularly....I think the Sherwood Brut is another similar and simple reg.
What I am saying is don't spend big money on a reg....and avoid a big monster console...just get the analog pressure guage, and you don't even want a boot for it. The big consoles are expensive, and they are drag and snag annoyances. Wear your computer or timer/depth guage on your wrist, and on the other wrist a compass. Or, get the $16 small compass that fits on the watch/timer/depth guage wrist strap--they work just fine for anything except the most serious underwater navigation over huge distances.

HOG regs is about as good as it gets. The DIN to Yoke adapter works just fine for regular scuba tanks. Also, there are PLENTY of recreational divers who dive a BP/W without a long hose, and many that dive WITH a long hose.

I agree with the long hose stance on things, because while I use a jacket BCD and a BP/W interchangeably depending on which I feel like toting around, or on the difficulty of the dive.

But overall, I'd take my BP/W into battle and leave the jacket at home