Ulfhedinn
-Skill Collector-
I am thinking of going with a 58lb wing for 119 doubles but Im not sure If I should purchase a alum or steel hog backplate. Recomendations?
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I am thinking of going with a 58lb wing for 119 doubles but Im not sure If I should purchase a alum or steel hog backplate. Recomendations?
Your back plate is part of your ballast. Your total ballast requirements are a function of the buoyancy of your exposure suit.
Wing capacity and choice of cylinders says nothing about the buoyancy of your drysuit and undies.
Tobin
White's Fusion Bullet is what I'm looking at combined with Fourth Element Xerotherm and Arctic.
Tobin is right . . . but with double 119s, if you are going to weight yourself for empty tanks, you are almost certaintly going to need SOME ballast. (Tanks are -2 each empty; bands and manifold maybe another 5. I can't imagine anyone in a dry suit being less than 7 pounds positive.) The question is, where will you need that ballast to be? If you use an aluminum plate, you have four more pound to play with, in terms of moving weight. It may not be relevant. If you are using sufficiently thick undergarments, you may require enough ballast that, even with a stainless plate, you have plenty to play around with. If your required ballast is small, however, you may be very happy to have options as to where to move it.
I have never dived 119s, so I have no idea how they balance. But, for example, we have two sets of LP72s, which are hideously head-heavy. The ONLY way I can balance them is to hang a six pound weight off the bottom bolt. If I didn't have the option of moving six pounds around, I'd be stuck diving the things out of trim, or swimming constantly. (And, before you ask, I spent a whole morning working with Bob Sherwood, the guru of trim, to see if we could adjust harness, bands, etc. to balance the tanks. At the end of it, he looked at me and said, "You're right. You CAN'T trim these out!")
Anyway, that is something to think about when you are making your plate decisions. I went to aluminum in the beginning, because I couldn't balance my tanks. I changed tanks and it got much easier, and as I've gained facility with doubles, I can trim out more configurations. But physics is inexorable, and if your rig is sufficiently out of balance, you will not be able to sit still in the water in horizontal trim.