DevonDiver
N/A
OMS wings tend to be the most popular 'rental' wings in a lot of the centers I've dived. So my assumption is that many divers learn tech using OMS kit. I think that influences many divers subsequently.
I've seen plenty of sun/salt bleached 'ancient looking' OMS wings hanging up in dive centers - so I'd guess reliability isn't an issue. The only catastrophic, dangerous, wing failure I've seen was on a Halcyon... go figure.
I don't see a problem with OMS. Dual-bladder wings meet the PADI TecRec requirements for wing redundancy...and that's good for tropical wetsuit tech diving. The only alternative would be drysuits (PADI don't accept lift bags for redundancy). I see no logic in choosing exposure protection to satisfy a buoyancy requirement. Issues arising from inadvertent ascents using dual bladder wings are entirely user error/incorrect protocols.
What harms some manufacturer reputation is inappropriate marketing of their kit. Saying that double-tank wings can be used for single-tank etc.... pushing the concept of 'comfort' harnesses through disinformation about the properties of minimalist harnesses. Selling 90lb 'expedition-grade' wings to entry-level tech divers... it seems a little disingenuous and doesn't appear to have the customers' best interests at heart.
My personal preference is for very minimalist kit... so I don't have much interest in comfort harnesses, wing bungees etc. But that's me and the dives I do.... OMS offer a selection of kit, so everyone is free to choose, according to their preferences, philosophies etc...
The only kit that I really don't like is the sidemount 'Profile' and 'Tesseract' combo. The Tesseract/Profile is quite a horrible rig for sidemount. OMS are lagging behind in not producing one, or more, dedicated sidemount rigs. I'd always hope to see manufacturers accepting that warm-water/aluminum tank diving had different needs to cold-water/steel tank sidemount diving.
I've seen plenty of sun/salt bleached 'ancient looking' OMS wings hanging up in dive centers - so I'd guess reliability isn't an issue. The only catastrophic, dangerous, wing failure I've seen was on a Halcyon... go figure.
I don't see a problem with OMS. Dual-bladder wings meet the PADI TecRec requirements for wing redundancy...and that's good for tropical wetsuit tech diving. The only alternative would be drysuits (PADI don't accept lift bags for redundancy). I see no logic in choosing exposure protection to satisfy a buoyancy requirement. Issues arising from inadvertent ascents using dual bladder wings are entirely user error/incorrect protocols.
What harms some manufacturer reputation is inappropriate marketing of their kit. Saying that double-tank wings can be used for single-tank etc.... pushing the concept of 'comfort' harnesses through disinformation about the properties of minimalist harnesses. Selling 90lb 'expedition-grade' wings to entry-level tech divers... it seems a little disingenuous and doesn't appear to have the customers' best interests at heart.
My personal preference is for very minimalist kit... so I don't have much interest in comfort harnesses, wing bungees etc. But that's me and the dives I do.... OMS offer a selection of kit, so everyone is free to choose, according to their preferences, philosophies etc...
The only kit that I really don't like is the sidemount 'Profile' and 'Tesseract' combo. The Tesseract/Profile is quite a horrible rig for sidemount. OMS are lagging behind in not producing one, or more, dedicated sidemount rigs. I'd always hope to see manufacturers accepting that warm-water/aluminum tank diving had different needs to cold-water/steel tank sidemount diving.