Not going by feel - how, then? Tips? Tricks?

[tbone1004]

R, SPG clipped to the right shoulder not the left. Clipping to the right doesn't interfere with stages as it just crosses over and follows the same path as your drysuit. Another option is a nice little trick that Jim Wyatt showed me a while back and that is to run the SPG on a really short hose and have it inside of the corrugated hose on your inflator. Follows the inflator straight down and you don't have to deal with clips. Works really well.

I'm super lazy and when I turn my sidemount regs into independent doubles I just leave the 9" hoses on them and they lay against my shoulders. Not quite ideal location for them in super cold, but in warm water it works well enough to not want me to change the hoses out. I am a big fan of the Jim Wyatt method though, I'm sure he wasn't the first, but was the first I saw do it.

http://www.wendellnope.com/caverichard.gif
Image is too big to upload, but you can see where he runs the SPG in the picture pretty well

 

[FinnMom]

Heated gloves!

 

[TSandM]

For the dump valve, running your finger around the cap in a circular motion will pick up the string. If you have gone all DIR and removed the ball on the string, you may need a rather large knot to be able to feel it through thick gloves. Do check the security of the cap from time to time if you use this method, because if you are using a counterclockwise sweep, you can gradually unscrew the cap. It hasn't happened to me, but it happened to a friend of mine.

 

[tbone1004]

Lynne, and that is where going "all DIR" is where many of us disagree with the philosophy of one rig configuration for all diving. Works great in warm water, works really damn good in cool water, but once you get into the cold stuff you guys dive in, what I had while in Maine, and what the Europeans dive in, some compromises have to be made as far as bolt snap size, knobs on the dump valve, etc. All small stuff, but it's the little things that can make all the difference in the world

 

[Pinecube]

If you have gone all DIR and removed the ball on the string, you may need a rather large knot to be able to feel it through thick gloves.

In terms of diving with gloves, why remove the ball at all if you're just going to tie a big knot at the end? It seems a little counter-intuitive to me.
I'm curious too... Why someone would remove the ball even for warm water?


I like the fixed d-ring suggestion from lowvis. Perhaps I just haven't gotten the hang of it yet but those d-rings seems hellbent on hugging the straps they're attached to. Trying re-clip something in thick gloves to a little d-ring without looking or stopping my swim seems much more difficult than it should be.

 

[Storker]

Dry gloves.

drygloves

I expected that one

Dry gloves don't add much for sensitivity

That's basically what I've been told IRL, too.

once you're used to em, i think they're better than the thick neo gloves.

Hrmf. IIRC, I can get about four to five good quality boltsnaps for the price of one pair of drygloves, so going dry is prolly cheaper than changing all my boltsnaps. Wasn't too motivated for another spending spree, tho'...

As far as the dump valve, [...]. If you can't feel it, put a bigger knob on it. I think the ScubaPro ones are the big honking ones that are about impossible to miss....

Floaty knob on dump valve can help actually now I think as you sweep your hand across the approximate area and it gets caught

Cool! I'll see if I can find a different knob.

Oversize all your D-rings and make sure that they are fixed. Upgrade all your boltsnaps to the oversized ones.

Good idea. Bit of a chore, though, for the left hip D-ring. I've got the Halcyon weight pockets with a D-ring sewn onto the left one.

usually our waters are colder than yours you warm water wuss

Well, thanks a lot, and best wishes to you, too. (We're still in the Basic forum, right? )

Two tips I have for you:

1) use a toothpick to put "dots" of aquasure on the palm side of the fingers up to the 2nd knuckle. That will give you grip. You may need to repeat that every season.
2) use clips that have a large ring on the bottom of it so you can get your pink into the ring and hold the damned clip still. Then 'wrap' your index finger over the top of the clip as you hold it open. That way, when you drag the clip over the D-ring you'll feel the D ring with your finger. Even though you won't feel the clip with your finger with dry gloves on, you'll know when it's hooked. It's all about a combination of the pink hooked under and the index finger hooked over to make it not rotate.

Great, thanks. I'll look into that!

 

[thefeve]

Bigger snaps are nice, but I haven't NEEDED to. Def consider it though. I say give me a go for a while then change things up slowly as needed.

 

[Diver0001]

For the dump valve, running your finger around the cap in a circular motion will pick up the string. If you have gone all DIR and removed the ball on the string, you may need a rather large knot to be able to feel it through thick gloves. Do check the security of the cap from time to time if you use this method, because if you are using a counterclockwise sweep, you can gradually unscrew the cap. It hasn't happened to me, but it happened to a friend of mine.

I prefer to check my gear before the dive starts.

BCD malfunctions are real, people. And they can be serious. In this sense, Lynne has a point. Do your pre-dive checks. Check your own gear. Let your buddy check yours.

From OW on we learn to check our own gear and to let our buddy check it too. Many (experienced) divers are lax in this area and it creates a major risk factor. The kinds of procedures Lynne is talking about are *very* important if you and/or your buddy suck at buddy checks. This very failure happened recently to a friend of mine. He discovered it while he was setting up his gear.... not after he had it on.... not at the 5m "bubble check"... not at a critical point in the dive.... He discovered it when his kit was in the back of the car when he was putting the regs on it.

He was thorough. I wonder what would have happened if this were not the case......

R..

 

[Storker]

For the dump valve, running your finger around the cap in a circular motion will pick up the string.

I'm sort of putting my palm on my wing, and then swiping downward with my fingers splayed. Wearing 5-fingers, that usually works fairly OK, but I still struggle a bit when I'm wearing 3-fingers

If you have gone all DIR and removed the ball on the string [...]

I go by DWWFM (doing what works for me) rather than DIR, but I gotta admit I've picked up more than one config solution from the DIR crowd. I don't think I'm ever going to remove that ball, though.

 

[tbone1004]

Storker, Imla was pulling your leg since he's down in Oslo, tongue in cheek mate, laugh with him....

Pinecube, the reason for removing them stems mainly from the fact that they aren't needed unless you are in water with gloves that can't hold onto a piece of line, i.e. this situation. When you are diving with stage bottles they also tend to catch in the stage bottles and can cause the dump valve to open on its own or not to open when you need it to, so it is generally removed. They do serve a function in this type of environment, and some divers that use the same rig for cold and warm water will just have a separate dump valve, one with knob one without.