Wanting to buy my first reg and BCD

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Thanks! I went with the brigade. I tried it on and it was sooooo comfy. The price is nice too.

I’ll be at the lake Labor Day weekend. I may go next weekend Sunday but my moms birthday is Saturday so I doubt it. Two weekends in a row, she might kill me lol.

I just got an offer from high tide scuba in Mansfield to do nitrox with them so I may get that cert done Labor Day weekend too. Stoked!!
How much are they charging you? Do you live in that area?
 
How much are they charging you? Do you live in that area?
$150. I don't, but I dove with them last time and the owner actually offered to meet me at the lake to do the "classroom" part. PADI charges $175 so $25 discount is pretty neat.
 
$150. I don't, but I dove with them last time and the owner actually offered to meet me at the lake to do the "classroom" part. PADI charges $175 so $25 discount is pretty neat.
NASE & NAUI are both $150, too (that's what Scuba Toys charges), but if the owner will meet you out at the lake, that's not a bad deal. Then you can maybe actually get your two nitrox dives done. With NAUI there are two certification levels. The first one is Nitrox Certified, which means you're qualified to dive nitrox and can get tank fills, but haven't actually completed the required number of nitrox dives. Nitrox Diver is the 2nd level and means you've completed two nitrox dives that were at least 20 minutes each. It's a good certification to have, but unless you can get EAN fills severely discounted, it's not really worth diving it IMHO. You'll pay $14/tank for EAN32 in Cozumel and really the only benefit is shorter surface intervals. Sure you get longer NDL times underwater, but it doesn't breathe any differently and if you breathe down an AL80 of air in say 45 minutes, you're going to breathe that EAN32 tank down just as quickly. Some people say it makes you feel less tired after a dive and that may be true if you're doing lots of dives over a few days. But diving it for your typical two-tank dive in the Caribbean you really won't notice any difference. Pretty much a placebo effect really. I've dove it a few times and I don't feel any better/worse after my dives.
 
I picked up my regs and tank from scubatoys today!! My BCD is still on order from Zeagle sadly. Maybe next week.

My regulators rode shotgun on the way home lol. Safely in a handy dandy scubatoys bag.

I can’t wait to get my bcd and try everything out!
 
I made it out to Scuba Ranch on Friday - couldn't make the deep dive more than 42', it got super cold and super dark. Woudn't go without a hood, above 25' or so very comfortable though. Visibility on the north end was terrible, but much better on the southern end. Couldn't find any of the sights on the north end by under water navigation but had a lot better luck on the 2nd tank on the south end.

 
Vis didn't look too terribly bad from what I can tell. And normally during the summer months I don't dive a hood. It gets a little chilly below about 30' but I don't really have any reason to go much deeper than that. Although, when I was out for my RSD course, on the last dive I did find one of the sailboats and the top of the mast was right around 15', so I'm not certain how deep it actually goes right there. There's no marker buoy for it or anything. I do want to get back out there soon, though. Maybe in the next couple of weeks.
 
I just picked up by bc! Still in the parking lot at scubatoys lol. About to head home and hopefully have time to jump in the pool before my moms birthday dinner.

I’m so excited!
 
I just picked up by bc! Still in the parking lot at scubatoys lol. About to head home and hopefully have time to jump in the pool before my moms birthday dinner.

I’m so excited!
So how was it? Did you get a chance to dive it in the pool? Likes? Dislikes?
 
You'll pay $14/tank for EAN32 in Cozumel and really the only benefit is shorter surface intervals. Sure you get longer NDL times underwater, but it doesn't breathe any differently and if you breathe down an AL80 of air in say 45 minutes, you're going to breathe that EAN32 tank down just as quickly. Some people say it makes you feel less tired after a dive and that may be true if you're doing lots of dives over a few days. But diving it for your typical two-tank dive in the Caribbean you really won't notice any difference. Pretty much a placebo effect really. I've dove it a few times and I don't feel any better/worse after my dives.

Cost for EANx fills varies with who you dive with. My op gets her AL80s in either 32% or 36% and only charges me an extra $10. It's true that a tank won't last you any longer and if you are only diving one or two days, it's probably not worth it. But if you are there all week, after a few days you'll see your NDLs getting shorter and shorter and I find that I become NDL limited after two days if I'm on air doing two dives a day. If you do more than that (like on a live aboard or some ops even run up to 5 dives a day in Cozumel), your dives are going to get very short, very fast.

And as far as the "placebo effect" goes, as a scientist, I tried really hard to not believe that I would feel more energetic after diving with nitrox, but after a morning of air dives, I need a nap whereas later in the week, when I switch to EAN36, and I'm wide awake all afternoon.
 
So how was it? Did you get a chance to dive it in the pool? Likes? Dislikes?

After dinner, it was dark but I turned on the pool light (attempting to ignore the horde of bugs it attracted) and jumped in! Okay, I went slowly down the stairs, being super careful not to scratch my shiny new tank on anything...

It was AWESOME! I inflated the BC fully and didn't have any kind of "pushing you on your face" sensation many people describe with back inflates. I love the shoulder dump, just pulling on the inflator is like magic. In a 5 ft deep pool, it's really hard to practice buoyancy. Ever breath can make me either sink all the way down or float all the way up..it's fun to play with for a bit, but annoying when I'm trying to figure out how much lead I need.

Love the regs too. The Envoy is very easy to breathe and comfortable. I can't wait to try everything out at scuba ranch this coming sunday! I'm hopefully going to try everything in a deeper pool saturday, but it's not mine so I'll have to ask if it's okay.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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