BeijaFlor
Contributor
I've posted some questions about the newer side-mount rigs, in the past week or so, because I was seriously considering a new rig to replace my DIY-converted DiveRite Transpac. As discussed elsewhere, the Transpac wasn't really meant for side-mount, but they worked up a system to use it ... however, the horseshoe wing is far from optimum; I had a hard time rigging it to minimize the "taco effect." Plus, I'm doing almost all of my dives on-vacation in the tropics, using the dive-operator's aluminum 80s (12-litre for the world outside the USA), and DiveRite is really meant for Florida cave diving with always-negative steel tanks.
There are a lot of innovative rigs out there, but there were only two available to look over in person (and maybe to dive) in the Greater Washington DC area ... one shop northwest of Manassas had a DiveRite Nomad LTZ, and they and DiveRite will be hosting a Demo Day next Saturday at Millbrook Quarry. Another shop, south of Manassas (Blu Water Scuba), had a wide range of Hollis gear, including the SMS Katana ... and from what I've read here, on other threads, I figured the Katana would be a better choice than the Nomad. And Blu Water Scuba had their own indoor training pool, where I could try it out ... to my heart's content.
I scheduled a demo dive for the Katana, yesterday morning (Tuesday 2 Aug), at Blu Water Scuba. They have a huge (25-yard length) indoor pool for training and tryouts ... Tom, the owner, helped me a little with the set-up, mainly by finding me a pair of half-full tanks so they'd be "floaty" for my trial. Wish someone could have taken pictures of me while I worked with it, but ... no matter.
The Katana's air-bladder is sewn out of coated fabric, rather than welded vinyl; it has internal baffles (shapers) that help eliminate the "beach-ball effect" you might get without them - even blown up to the max, resting on a table, it's reasonably flat. Nice touch. It has a long "spine pocket" with slots for two 5-lb weights along the small of the back and one 3-lb weight closer to the shoulder-blades. I used 10 lbs for the first dive, and it was ample; I was a bit overweighted, in fact. (Incidentally, the Katana weighs in at 6 lbs, compared to 8 lbs for my old DiveRite rig. That's two pounds less worry for my checked bag when I go on-holiday. And it's significantly more compact, emptied of air -- I think I can get along with a smaller checked-bag, too.)
"One size fits all" is what Hollis says about the Katana, and the truth is that it is HIGHLY adjustable, while you're preparing for the dive. You really can't adjust it in the water, though; you have to take it off. Once you get it set-up right, though, it's easy to get in and out of the harness, and it's stable.
I set up the tanks with the 'stage straps' I'd been using with the Transpac and its ring-bungee setup, adding "choker" bolt-snaps around the tank neck -- they're mostly to handle the tank out of the water, though. I took my time setting up, donned the tanks in the shallow end of the pool, and set out for the deep end -- but immediately encountered two problems: (1) The loop bungees were too short and stiff for me to get them around my tank valves, and (2) one of the "leader" bungees between the loop and the shoulder-harness came untied from the loop. I returned to the side of the pool, and re-tied the leader -- and I used those "leaders" to loop-in the tanks for the rest of my dive. (They were enough to keep the tanks reasonably snug under my shoulders. I can improve the loops later.)
First impression -- the Katana is superbly balanced. I noticed a couple of times that I felt a bit "light in the feet," but generally it had me flat in the water the way you need to be. The dropped-style D-rings on the back of the belt make "tail rails" quite unnecessary, and it was easy to find them by feel; ditto with the angled D-rings on the front of the belt. Everything felt perfectly stable. I did notice I needed to angle up a bit to vent air out of the top-mounted dump valve, and get vertical (leaning back a little) to get rid of the last vestiges. And I didn't have any way to secure the inflator-hose to my harness -- but that's something I can take care of before I take it out diving again. I had no trouble unclipping the tank-tails and pushing them forward to go through the diamond-rings they had in the deep end of the pool, nor with entirely unclipping the tanks and swimming back to the shallow end as if I were finishing my dive. And I had less trouble floating face-up on the surface than I'd had with my DiveRite rig.
So I got dry, went back to the shop, and bought it ... then I decided to play with it some more, because I was there and I had the pool to myself. I tightened up the crotch-strap a little more, took the stage-strap harnessing off the cam-bands, and tried again with the more 'minimalist' tank rigging the Katana makes possible. I also put less weight into the spine-pockets, using 6 lbs instead of 10 - this with both tanks in the "floaty zone," one at 1000 PSI, the other at 1700.
Second impressions: The Katana feels like part of me -- easier and more natural than my Transpac ever was, even when I was using it back-mount. I did have to go vertical, as I said above, to get the last vestiges of air out of it ... but then I was neutral, comfortably stable in the water-column, with less lead than I've ever needed even for a fresh-water dive. I repeated all the "sidemount tricks" and gear-drills I could think of, and completely dropped my right tank to swim around a little with just the left tank. And it worked ... beautifully. By the end of the second session, I had both tanks down to 1000 PSI, and they rode right where I needed them to be as I finished my dive. (Actually I swam back to the shallow end underwater, with the tanks completely unclipped and bobbing vertically, the bolt-snaps in one hand. Perfect.)
I have a few more things to work up, and to add ... I want to mount longer loop-bungees, though I managed to tie the existing ones off closer to their ends. I want a surgical-tube loop to secure my inflator to my chest. And I'm buying a double-offset rigid D-ring for the back of my crotch-strap, to give me a place to attach my butt-pocket or "man purse."
And I'm thinking of getting a heavier wetsuit and a pair of tanks, so I can dive locally with this rig. It's that much fun -- it would have to be, wouldn't it, to get me to consider cold-water diving again.
There are a lot of innovative rigs out there, but there were only two available to look over in person (and maybe to dive) in the Greater Washington DC area ... one shop northwest of Manassas had a DiveRite Nomad LTZ, and they and DiveRite will be hosting a Demo Day next Saturday at Millbrook Quarry. Another shop, south of Manassas (Blu Water Scuba), had a wide range of Hollis gear, including the SMS Katana ... and from what I've read here, on other threads, I figured the Katana would be a better choice than the Nomad. And Blu Water Scuba had their own indoor training pool, where I could try it out ... to my heart's content.
I scheduled a demo dive for the Katana, yesterday morning (Tuesday 2 Aug), at Blu Water Scuba. They have a huge (25-yard length) indoor pool for training and tryouts ... Tom, the owner, helped me a little with the set-up, mainly by finding me a pair of half-full tanks so they'd be "floaty" for my trial. Wish someone could have taken pictures of me while I worked with it, but ... no matter.
The Katana's air-bladder is sewn out of coated fabric, rather than welded vinyl; it has internal baffles (shapers) that help eliminate the "beach-ball effect" you might get without them - even blown up to the max, resting on a table, it's reasonably flat. Nice touch. It has a long "spine pocket" with slots for two 5-lb weights along the small of the back and one 3-lb weight closer to the shoulder-blades. I used 10 lbs for the first dive, and it was ample; I was a bit overweighted, in fact. (Incidentally, the Katana weighs in at 6 lbs, compared to 8 lbs for my old DiveRite rig. That's two pounds less worry for my checked bag when I go on-holiday. And it's significantly more compact, emptied of air -- I think I can get along with a smaller checked-bag, too.)
"One size fits all" is what Hollis says about the Katana, and the truth is that it is HIGHLY adjustable, while you're preparing for the dive. You really can't adjust it in the water, though; you have to take it off. Once you get it set-up right, though, it's easy to get in and out of the harness, and it's stable.
I set up the tanks with the 'stage straps' I'd been using with the Transpac and its ring-bungee setup, adding "choker" bolt-snaps around the tank neck -- they're mostly to handle the tank out of the water, though. I took my time setting up, donned the tanks in the shallow end of the pool, and set out for the deep end -- but immediately encountered two problems: (1) The loop bungees were too short and stiff for me to get them around my tank valves, and (2) one of the "leader" bungees between the loop and the shoulder-harness came untied from the loop. I returned to the side of the pool, and re-tied the leader -- and I used those "leaders" to loop-in the tanks for the rest of my dive. (They were enough to keep the tanks reasonably snug under my shoulders. I can improve the loops later.)
First impression -- the Katana is superbly balanced. I noticed a couple of times that I felt a bit "light in the feet," but generally it had me flat in the water the way you need to be. The dropped-style D-rings on the back of the belt make "tail rails" quite unnecessary, and it was easy to find them by feel; ditto with the angled D-rings on the front of the belt. Everything felt perfectly stable. I did notice I needed to angle up a bit to vent air out of the top-mounted dump valve, and get vertical (leaning back a little) to get rid of the last vestiges. And I didn't have any way to secure the inflator-hose to my harness -- but that's something I can take care of before I take it out diving again. I had no trouble unclipping the tank-tails and pushing them forward to go through the diamond-rings they had in the deep end of the pool, nor with entirely unclipping the tanks and swimming back to the shallow end as if I were finishing my dive. And I had less trouble floating face-up on the surface than I'd had with my DiveRite rig.
So I got dry, went back to the shop, and bought it ... then I decided to play with it some more, because I was there and I had the pool to myself. I tightened up the crotch-strap a little more, took the stage-strap harnessing off the cam-bands, and tried again with the more 'minimalist' tank rigging the Katana makes possible. I also put less weight into the spine-pockets, using 6 lbs instead of 10 - this with both tanks in the "floaty zone," one at 1000 PSI, the other at 1700.
Second impressions: The Katana feels like part of me -- easier and more natural than my Transpac ever was, even when I was using it back-mount. I did have to go vertical, as I said above, to get the last vestiges of air out of it ... but then I was neutral, comfortably stable in the water-column, with less lead than I've ever needed even for a fresh-water dive. I repeated all the "sidemount tricks" and gear-drills I could think of, and completely dropped my right tank to swim around a little with just the left tank. And it worked ... beautifully. By the end of the second session, I had both tanks down to 1000 PSI, and they rode right where I needed them to be as I finished my dive. (Actually I swam back to the shallow end underwater, with the tanks completely unclipped and bobbing vertically, the bolt-snaps in one hand. Perfect.)
I have a few more things to work up, and to add ... I want to mount longer loop-bungees, though I managed to tie the existing ones off closer to their ends. I want a surgical-tube loop to secure my inflator to my chest. And I'm buying a double-offset rigid D-ring for the back of my crotch-strap, to give me a place to attach my butt-pocket or "man purse."
And I'm thinking of getting a heavier wetsuit and a pair of tanks, so I can dive locally with this rig. It's that much fun -- it would have to be, wouldn't it, to get me to consider cold-water diving again.
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