xDeep Stealth Tec - downsides?

[tbone1004]

Stealth tec works just fine for that imo.
Butt dump is a non-issue, that only someone that hasn't understood how to use it will point out. If you can wipe your ass, you can dump air of a stealth.
The Tec is often used with stages (which are dropped in the cave) and left with 2 tanks, so it's not a problem. Quite some pictures on the facebook group (Stealth 2.0 sidemount).


P.S: I wouldn't consider Neto to be the reference about Xdeep or anything that looks like it. I'd more have a look at what Sidemount Silesia or Steve Martin do...

try it with top mounted stages and report back. bottom mounted stages are fine with it, but you can't top mount them which is problematic in certain passages in caves. In OW it's not going to matter, but if you try to scooter with stages all around your chest like the stupid pictures from the razor/xdeep guys with 6 bottles front mounted, you're going to be creating a lot of unnecessary drag when the prop wash hits those tanks

 

[Patoux01]

Looking at people that "show how to top mount their stages" and then proceed to banging them everywhere in the cave is not what I call proper diving, nor what I'd call "smart".

6 tanks is already out of the scope we are discussing here. Adding a scooter as well.

There's sufficient proof that the methods used by Steve and others work just fine, even if they usually don't video with 6 tanks, there's a few with 4. Anyway, not gonna bother discussing this yet again with you... I'm simply pointing Stuartv to the people that know about the rig he's asking about.

 

[tbone1004]

@Patoux01 he asked for the downsides, that is a downside because it removes flexibility and versatility. Is it a deal breaker? no, but it is a compromise. The tail dump can also get pulled and beaten up a bit if you are in true sidemount only passage and is the bigger issue I have with that design. Not the end of the world, but it's anything but perfect, nothing is.

 

[stuartv]

BTW, unless something changed, no way the REC wing is 18# while the TEC is 50#. If anything, REC might be 18kg.

My bad. Their website says "13kg/28#". In my mind, I guess I dropped a couple of digits out of the middle.

Katana is fine with 2x steels and 3x al80's in a drysuit in cave country, though I wouldn't recommend trying to bob at the surface with it. That is not really a balanced rig though. In a drysuit assuming you are balanced, which in cold water you are, with 2x cave filled steel 121's and 2x al80's the wing has to compensate for 26lbs of lift. Gives you 9lbs to deal with keeping your head out of water and you can get some advantage from your drysuit. 35lbs is enough. It can't float your rig, but in sidemount you can't really take it off without removing the tanks first.

...

For Mexico with just AL80's I'd use the DECO rig that Oxycheq sells. Just under $300, just add a bungee mechanism of your choice and you're good.
DECO - Dive Equipment Company - Sidemount - BCD's

I looked at Oxycheq's website and I only see their Recon I and Recon II SM rigs. Those don't look anything like the harnesses I saw on DECO's website. And the wing itself definitely has nothing to do with the one and only wing DECO has. Am I missing something?

Anyway, the bigger question I have is about lift requirements. I have seen you recommend to someone in the past a 35# wing for single tank back mount (steel tank, cold water, drysuit). I don't understand how 35# of lift can be way too little in BM and enough in SM for an otherwise identical config (e.g. double steels, 2 x AL80s, drysuit, cold water undies).

I haven't found anywhere in my reading on SM where it explicitly discusses calculating lift requirements. I would have thought the basic requirements are the same for SM as for BM. I.e. You need enough lift to match your max negative buoyancy, accounting for suit compression or dry suit catastrophic failure, and you need enough to float your rig. Whichever number is greater.

If I were using 2 x HP100 + 2 X AL80, then I reckon that would mean starting the dive 28 # negative (the sum of all the gas I'm carrying). If I'm in a drysuit with cold water undies, I might be wearing (for the sake of argument) 14# of lead. If my suit has a total loss of bouyancy, that potentially leaves me 42# negative at the bottom, at the start of a dive. Is the lower lift requirement because in SM I can just ditch 3 of the 4 tanks, if I had to? If it's the start of the dive (in this hypothetical scenario), I won't yet have much of a deco obligation (if any), so 1 tank of bottom gas should be plenty to get me to the surface, right?

That still means starting at 28# negative. That only leaves 7 # of lift to keep my head out of the water - and that's if I am perfectly weighted. If I decide to use my HP120s, then I'm more like 31# negative at the start and 35# of lift really starts sounding like not enough.

Then the other requirement to evaluate is floating my rig. You dismissed that by saying I would have to remove tanks first. Really? HAVE to? I have not tried SM yet, so I could just be totally not getting it. But, it looks like you could shuck your whole rig without unclipping tanks, if you wanted to. I read a post in another thread where someone was talking about getting back to a boat and unclipping tanks to clip them to a line before he got out. With steel tanks being negative, there would be the risk of dropping one and losing it. The guy said his buddy asked him, "why didn't you just take off your whole rig and clip that to the line?" He seemed to think that was a good idea. Also, when I did Rescue training, at least one of the exercises involved taking off my complete rig on the surface while also towing a non-responsive diver and giving rescue breaths. Would I not do the same thing even if I were wearing a SM rig? In which case, wouldn't I want my rig to be able to float itself, so I don't just lose my steel tanks?

To float the whole rig, if tanks are full, the steels would be around 11# negative and the AL80s would be about 3#s, right? That's counting attached regs. If the harness has 14# of lead on it, then the total rig would be over 42# (again) negative.

So, again, my lack of understanding about SM brings me to the conclusion that 2 x steels plus 2 x AL80s plus a drysuit and cold water undies would yield a need for more than 35# of lift.

Please tell me what I'm missing! Part of why I've been reading so much on SM lately has been because of this specific question and trying to work out the answer on my own.

I have a buddy who just got a Sump Uk wing and some miscellaneous pieces from Andrew Goring at Sump UK on Facebook. I am impressed and probably about to get me an H harness setup with his wing. It is very reasonable and shipping to the States wasn't bad at all.

I was looking at his stuff. It does look really cool. But, I could only see where he has one wing and I wasn't sure if it would have enough lift for me, either.

the new Katana has changed my opinion on the need for 2 different rigs for AL80 vs steel tank diving btw. It is the first rig that I've dove that handles both gracefully so long as you are diving somewhat close to a balanced rig. I.e. it can't treally handle cave filled PST104's no matter what you do

That's down to the increased weight of the gas you're carrying in a pumped-up 104, right?

I'm talking about using HP tanks versus LP. Does the increased overall weight of an HP tank (e.g. HP100 or HP120) change your feelings regarding 35# of lift being enough for 2 steels plus 2 AL80s, drysuit, etc..?

Stealth tec works just fine for that imo.
Butt dump is a non-issue, that only someone that hasn't understood how to use it will point out. If you can wipe your ass, you can dump air of a stealth.
The Tec is often used with stages (which are dropped in the cave) and left with 2 tanks, so it's not a problem. Quite some pictures on the facebook group (Stealth 2.0 sidemount).


P.S: I wouldn't consider Neto to be the reference about Xdeep or anything that looks like it. I'd more have a look at what Sidemount Silesia or Steve Martin do...

Thanks! I had a good look at Steve Martin's website the other day. When I do eventually decide to ante up and actually start learning to dive SM, I will probably also ante up for his videos. It was something like $175 for all his stuff, which doesn't sound too bad, to me, for what it looks like you get.

 

[tbone1004]

@stuartv the wings ship from Oxycheq, but aren't branded Oxycheq. Personally I would call Cave Adventurers and ask for current Katana pricing before buying a full deco rig because it may get close enough to be worth going with the Hollis.

Regarding 104's. The 104's are too negative inherently so despite being able to accommodate the gas delta, it can't accommodate the gas plus the negative buoyancy of the rig. 35lbs is nowhere near enough for that. With Faber 108's it's closer because they are about 4lbs less negative each.

Regarding lift. Sidemount has issues with large lift volumes because of the area and profile requirements of the diver as well as sensitivity to trim. Backmount can have 60lb wings with no issue because there is a lot more room to put it because you don't care about vertical profile like you do in sidemount. My biggest issue with my Nomad XT is that it has angel wings. It's oodles of lift, but not really streamlined because it has pontoons on your sides.

I have issues with sidemount in OW because unless you need it for some reason, I find it a lot more complicated to deal with. Yes you can shuck your whole rig, but unless you use neck leashes, the tops will come out of the bungees and you'll have a rig trying to float itself with tanks having every which way that create some huge entanglement issues. It's very different than ditching a backmount rig. If you are going to hand bottles up to the boat, they should have a line that you can clip them to, this is similar to what we use in cave diving to string bottles up in the water before we leave. Just a line with overhand loops tied in it, quite simple, but quite effective. You remove the bottles, clip them to the line, and then they can be hauled up. If you remove the whole rig, now you have a rig that depending on the tanks can be 4' long with 50lb tanks hanging from it that want to go every which way from Sunday. It's not a graceful way to get back on a boat and can cause all sorts of issues. I don't plan on ditching my rig, so that's a big difference in backmount. You can decide if it's the right call for you. I would not dive my Katana with HP100's in the ocean without a 50lb lift bag, but have no issues with LP121's and 3 al80's in a cave

 

[DevonDiver]

No issues using the Stealth Tec diving AL80s.... I've used it for warm-water diving and had bunches of students using it.

It's a very well thought out rig, easy to configure and flexible for a full range of diving uses. Most of the drawbacks I hear quoted stem from user issues, not problems with the kit.... (and that's not specifically for the Stealth either).

 

[Patoux01]

Thanks! I had a good look at Steve Martin's website the other day. When I do eventually decide to ante up and actually start learning to dive SM, I will probably also ante up for his videos. It was something like $175 for all his stuff, which doesn't sound too bad, to me, for what it looks like you get.

That's how I learned, with patience as well. I did have access to a thread (in french) with a veeery large amount of information and had some contact with Steve and a few others recognized instructors in the "stealth world", so that helped.

You don't necessarily need to buy them, there's some free stuff around that's quite good.


About tanks... I'm not sure why people would take tanks that make them over-weighted, so I'm not gonna comment on that...

 

[sethw]

The short answer is, no, there is no downside to using the Stealth Tec with Al 80s, people do that all the time now in Mexico, it is very clean and streamlined, in some ways more so than the Classic. You get 42 pounds of lift, so even in your worst case scenario with steel tanks and total drysuit failure you would have enough lift.

As for floating your rig, that's kind of a back mount concept, I think. The beauty of using a side mount system like the Stealth (especially with AL tanks) is that, with the harness properly weighted to offset the buoyancy of your exposure suit, the diver is close to neutrally buoyant with the "rig" on (i.e., without tanks). There are not many situations I can think of where it would be advantageous or necessary to remove the harness and wing. Tanks possibly. When using a drysuit removing the harness would leave me 16 pounds positive, not ideal. No weight harness or belt like back mount.

-Seth

 

[AHS]

Ok. Been reading thu this. I am about to embark on tec deep. And, for some reason, would like to hit 100m. I live in the Philippines, so warm water. And probably the deepest I will regularly dive would be the deeper wrecks in Truk.

Currently, I am NB with two AL80s diving an Aquamundo. I use 3lbs at the shoulders for trim.

So...what kind of rig make more sense? Razor? Stealth xdeep tec?

 

[BenjaminF]

@AHS , I've just finished my sidemount course and I'm starting to wonder the same thing. I've tried the xDeep Classic and the DiveRite Nomad LS. The xDeep was in a lot of ways more comfortable, but the lack of the ring to clip tanks onto was rather annoying. Having to use the bungee to attach the tanks isn't always the easiest of options.