I've got questions!

[Colliam7]

You don't need a videographer. If I'm teaching at Vortex, I'll clip my camera to one of the buoy lines and swim in front of it for about 30-60 seconds. It's enough to see what I need to see.

Great idea! Thanks.

 

[TecDiver1990]

Why wouldn't you use the OMS Profile in an overhead environment?

 

[floridakid]

Ditto on pretty much everything Dive-aholic says. He helped me tweak my homemade converted backplate rig and made it at least sort-of divable. But if you look in the classifieds section, you will notice that all of my backmount stuff is listed as "for sale." My backplate rig took several hours of tweaking to get it "OK" and it still was not nearly as good as a real sidemount rig. In spite of 10 feet worth of bungee and all kinds of other efforts, the wing still tacoed enough to drop my swim speed by almost 40 fpm. The amount of drag I got from the taco effect made diving with other people misserable because I could not keep up with my team while swimming a comfortable pace. My RMV went from .6 in backmount to .9 in sidemount which is crazy.

So what is the solution?

I found a used armadillo A2 for less than what I paid for my backmount wing. In fact, the armadillo I got has never been wet and I got it for half the price of a new one. There are plenty of used sidemount rigs that are out there that people are selling for a good price. Edd tried to tell me that I would spend more money trying to turn my backmount rig into a sidemount rig and that I would never be as happy with a converted rig as what I would be with an actual sidemount rig. Thank god I came to my senses and stopped chasing that dragon before I proved him right.

Take it from someone who was super resistant to this very idea but realized it was the right way to go. Sell your backmount rig. Buy a sidemount rig. Then you will be much happier than a BS backplate conversion rig that will never be quite right.

 

[karstdvr]

You don't need a videographer. If I'm teaching at Vortex, I'll clip my camera to one of the buoy lines and swim in front of it for about 30-60 seconds. It's enough to see what I need to see.

Interesting idea. How about stop swimming,let go,and the camera catch what happens? Swimming hides a lot of evils,that not moving will show up in a second. If someone has a well balanced rig,then hovering should occur without moving. Great suggestion Rob.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Interesting idea. How about stop swimming,let go,and the camera catch what happens? Swimming hides a lot of evils,that not moving will show up in a second. If someone has a well balanced rig,then hovering should occur without moving. Great suggestion Rob.

Yes, swimming does hide a lot in trim and technique. Usually what I'm looking for is streamlining and cylinder position after making changes to the rig. If I'm looking for trim issues I will stop and hover in front of the camera for 10-15 seconds to evaluate that.

 

[ept444]

I will be diving sidemount this summer im excited

what tanks are the best for SM?

 

[Dive-aholic]

I will be diving sidemount this summer im excited

what tanks are the best for SM?

It depends. How tall are you? What type of diving are you planning on doing? Why are you diving sidemount? There's no tank that's perfect for everyone. Best thing to do is try as many different cylinders as you can before spending money on a set.