Sidemount as a first own setup?

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No, and unless you are going to go cave diving or penetrating wrecks, forget it. Not one of the many members of our 150+ dive club who used to dive sidemount still do it. Despite what the practisers say about it, it is much harder than singles and certainly not needed for all recreational dives.
 
Thanks for all the answers!
Things like boat vs. shore are just what I'm looking for.
I don't know how I got my age set to 15 years, I'm 39 193cm/100kg (6'4"/220lb) so I think I can carry my tanks. :)
My plan was to go Thailand and dive the whole April there and after that get my own gear in Finland. Plan is still the same, just a different month. Of course that month will teach me a lot and probably get some good advises from those guys also (koh tao divers). I have a feeling that the level of teaching in Finland is also quite good, water is so cold that not everyone want's to be a diver here. Now I just have too much time to browse the Internet and plan what would be a good setup.
I know it will take time to get everything balanced and learn to be relaxed with new setup. I don't mind taking pool sessions and learn everything properly before going open water.
Again thanks for all the comments, want to know all the pros and cons of sidemount configuraions, specially the cons.
 
No, and unless you are going to go cave diving or penetrating wrecks, forget it. Not one of the many members of our 150+ dive club who used to dive sidemount still do it. Despite what the practisers say about it, it is much harder than singles and certainly not needed for all recreational dives.

There is nothing easier to jump into for a quick swim around than a single back mount setup, definitely. That being said, I don't dive sidemount (almost exclusively for the last 4 years) because its easier. My primary requirements were redundancy and the ability to do longer dives without going back to HUGE steel tanks on my back.

In terms of SM being a fad, there are definitely a lot of divers who looked at SM and thought "oooh, cool, I can look Tech AF" and then once they got to the challenges they quit because they never had a cogent reason for SM to begin with so there is no motivation to continue past that wall to where SM becomes instinctive and (somewhat) effortless.

Don't get me wrong, "because it's cool" is enough reason to do SM or CCR or whatever, hell it is why most of us dive in the first place, it just means that the likelihood of long term engagement is reduced.
 
Did you mean you HAVE dived SM exclusively for the last 4 years?
Ah yes, I see that may have been ambiguous ... about 1/3 of my dives over the last 4 years have been CCR. Of my OC dives, around 90% have been in SM, with a bit of twinset when it has been absolutely necessary and a handful of single BM dives, mostly using someone else's rig while they try out my SM set.

Oh and a day trip in Thailand with Chris from Deep 6 where I just grabbed a rental set because of luggage restraints, as did he. Turk brought his SM rig with and had no hassles on the cattle boat that I noticed.

Basically, I do not dive deeper than I can comfortably free dive (around 18-20m for me) without my own source of redundant gas. That, in a recreational setting where you might be renting tanks etc, that SM covers that requirement for me. I am not a hypoxic trimix diver, nor will I ever be one, but according to some extremely experienced folks that are, 70m is about where the lack of available back space vs bottles carried tips the scales.

In the gap between 18 and 72m, where 99% of my dives are, SM is sufficient for me. After a couple of hundred SM dives, I am also far from the last one ready when we kit up on the boat. Although to be fair, for my first 50-60 I often was.
 
Another factor that may not be readily apparent, that applies to the idea of a early days recreational OW diver going SM, is that it will (modestly) extend your dive times on a two tank trip, even more so if your buddy is also in SM.

To clarify:

If you do proper gas management, on a 30m dive in a single, you will need somewhere around 80-100 bar in an AL80 to get two working divers up safely with a reasonable ascent rate and a safety stop. That means that you will end up with somewhere around 70 bar or so left in your tank unusable on the first dive. After 2 dives, you have 2 "empty" tanks containing around 140 -150 bar of gas that goes back to the shop instead of being converted to bottom time.

With a SM pair of divers, you only need to ensure that you have enough in either tank to bring you up safely. In practice, this means that the gas for the second dive acts as reserve for the first dive, so a little careful planning means you end up with 2 tanks of around 40 bar left after the dives. That 800 litres difference, for me, means around 15 min extra bottom time. Not a big deal, sure, but that can be quite valuable depending on the site and cost of getting there.

The caveat of course is that if there is a problem on the first dive, you may not be able to get a second dive in but thats the cost of doing business.
 
Hi
SM doesn't necessarilly mean two tanks.
For rec dive, a single SM tank is perfect.
 
I was considering moving to sidemount because I dive double steels in a wetsuit which means I couldn't swim up my rig with a BC failure. With sidemount I could make myself around 14 pounds less negative (no bands, manifold, backplate) which would really help with getting closer to being "balanced". Lots of folks now coming out of the woodworks to say sidemount is more finicky than back doubles for some reason. Weird.
 

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