Back Plate Wing (BPW) Vs Jacket-Style BCD: A Scuba Gear Showdown!

ladies and gentlemen welcome to divers ready this mouthpiece Monday we are talking buoyancy compensating devices for PCBs we're going to be giving you the pros and cons of the backplate Winstar versus the traditional jacket style BCD some role in drop [Music] my name is James and I am a professional dive instructor and digital content creator and we make videos on this channel with one simple goal in mind to help make you a better scuba diver so if you haven't done so already if you new here welcome please consider here that subscribe button and click the little Bowl icon and that way you'll never miss any of our content so we just got back from Bimini in the Bahamas if you saw last week's video you know that we reviewed this exact PCB here the Cressey travel light and we've got more footage coming from the Bahamas in the weeks ahead but I thought it would be kind of a nice part 2 or follow-up based on the comments that you guys were leaving on the video that we dropped last week to do kind of a compare and contrast between what I usually dive for recreational diving which is this exact set up here back by can wing compared to what I dove in Bimini which was this lovely lightweight travel BCD and then at the end of this video I'm going to be giving you my one biggest piece of advice if you are looking to invest in your first ever oiling containing device no matter which style of BCD you choose that both essentially designed to do the same thing they want to give you positive buoyancy on the surface ie allow you to float the float when you need to remain on the surface and then help you achieve neutral buoyancy when you're under the water enjoying your dives so let's dive straight in with five things that both the back plate wing setup and the jacket star BCD having gone both stars of BCD feature an enclosed bladder which is designed to trap the right amount of gas that you need for each part of the dive the jacket style VCG does that by having a bladder that extends down the sides around the front of you kind of like a piggyback hug whereas on the wing component of a backplane wing you have either a doughnut or a horseshoe shaped bladder and all of the gas that is in the wing is located behind you we'll talk more about this a little bit later on but needless to say when you're on the surface I Germany for a jacket style particularly when I'm teaching recreational courses and I need to talk and listen to my students on the surface this one gives me more support in an upright position next similarity between these two different stars is that they both feature pretty much the same inflated control device so you have a power and for both that has an in place button and the deflate button and you also have a mouthpiece here where you can orally inflate the wing or jacket worth noting that no matter if you choose a backplate and wing or a jacket cell or whichever brand you choose the button closest to you is always the inflate button and the button furthest away from you is you're holding it is always the deflate button similarity number three is that they both have fastening devices to attach the BCD to your body so it doesn't go floating away mid die obviously jackets Darby CDs that's usually achieved with or pinched clips you have one around the waist one across the chest and one on each shoulder whereas on a backplate a wing style BCD you have two pieces of two inch webbing one piece that forms both the shoulder straps on the waist strap and the second piece which forms a crotch strap that hangs between the legs and they are all secured together by an old-school weight belt style buckle both the back plate the wing and the jacket style BCD also features some way to attach the scuba cylinder to the buoyancy compensating device and they achieve that the same way with tank bands so in the case of the back plate wing in this particular setup of two tank bands on here whereas the Crecy travel like BCD has one solid tank band and then another kind of support for backup velcro strap which I wouldn't trust with my life at all you'll see other versions that just have one single tank band it really doesn't make too much difference as long as one hold the jacket to the tank that's pretty much all you need often with a back plate and wing setup you need to buy an additional single tank adapter which is a strip of metal that the tank bands actually thread through the hole all the pieces together so as well as holding your tank securely your BCD awesome needs to be able to hold all the accessories you want to take with you when you're diving you can't be scuba diving around a reef holding your SMD in your real and your camera and your cutting device in your hands they look ridiculous so you need to think about what accessory should take diving with you and then choose a BCD that's suitable and that you can mount or attach all those accessories to so both of these Styles have D rings all over think on the shoulder straps on the waist straps which you can clip anything to but the jacket style BCD also features one large pocket on each side with a zipper on the top which will secure any accessories when I died a backplate and way I have a very particular way of storing my accessories around to make them as streamlined as possible and watch my trim because I don't want to be looking like a Christmas tree or a one-man band Longman's hanging on to me when I'm underwater so lots of similarities there none either BCD is particularly more expensive than the other one you can spend as much or as little money on either as you choose neither BCD is safer than the other one neither BCD is particularly sexier than the other one probably the biggest difference between a backplate wing set up a jacket style BCD are that the backplate wing is a modular system that can be customized to different transmissions whereas the jacket BCD is a single piece if you want to buy a jacket BCD you walk into your dive shop you get fitted for it like an article of clothing they're sold in t-shirt sizes and you buy only walk out the shop with a single piece the back plate wing is modular it's actually made of three basic components you have the back plate itself which is normally stainless steel or aluminium you have a harness which is normally two inch webbing that comes in a kit morning with the hardware that you need the earrings and buckles and so on and then you have the wing now this wing in particular is a single tank 40-pound wing from apex it's actually designed for safety diving and then you have other accessories you can pull on so for example the single tank adapter tank bands if you want to dive into a single tank you can add weight pockets but then you could also take the pieces and customize it for different types of diving so for example I could use this same harness but switch out the back plate for an aluminium backplate which is lighter and then use my 18 pound travel wing which is smaller and lighter and use it as a travel set up or I can keep the stainless steel backplate harness and parrot 60-pound huge massive redundant tech neither wing and use it to dive doubles the jackets dial BCD is designed for recreational diving and recreational diving only it's designed to carry one single tank at a time you can't stage bottles to this you can't dive doubles with it trying to do so is a massive mistake so if you want a future prove yourself if you think you're going to go into technical diving in the future if you think you're ready then I would definitely recommend you look at the back leg wing setup because you can keep the back plate keep harness and just buy a tech wing and swap them out based on the type of diving that you're doing probably the next major difference is comfort people will ask me all the time don't those screws stick in your back on the back well no they don't because I don't have a concave back but I have caught my rash guard on them on my wetsuit a couple of times when I find a minute I can actually cut those bolts down and make them a little bit shorter so that protrude so much but undoubtedly the winner here in comfort is the jacket style BCD look at that flush lovely back flight all this nice cushioning year it just feels like you're being hugged while you're diving so if comfort is an issue to you and you don't intend to do the tech time you don't need to mod you ala T or a backplane wing setup definitely have a look at the jacket style BCD difference number three is storage now as I mentioned when we were discussing similarities the jacket style BCD comes with nice big pockets the back laying wing does not I can still use the back plate and wing amount all the essential accessories I take whenever I'm doing a recreational fun diving on this system but if I need to carry anything more for example instructor slate skill slates or for example or mesh bag if we're doing a reef cleanup dive then I would think about a jacket style BCD because it's got those pockets and I can take those additional items securely the next major difference between these two is dump all weights now it's 2019 so nobody really should be using weight boat anymore please but you still need weight to help you get under the water so integrated weight systems are a must on the Cressy BCD you've got two options you've got these weight pockets on the front which are dump a ball in the event of an emergency and you have trim pockets in the back which are not dump away but you can put a small amount of weight in there and that will help you to trim out and spread the weight around your set up on the back like wing you don't get any options automatically for integrative weights but you can find pocket systems that you can attach directly to the back plate here which work in exactly the same fashion as these integrated weights that dumpling or couches and tie them on you can do them I find that with the steel back plate and just a small amount of weight in the trim pockets in the back well he doesn't need any additional lead for the types of diving that I do here in the South Florida now if I was cold water diving in a dry suit that would be a different story but we're gonna talk about trim and weighting in the coming video so I'm going to save that one for later the fifth difference between these two different styles of BCD is sizing and how you're fitted for them as I mentioned earlier Jaka star BCD is fitted like a t-shirt small medium large extra-large X and they are adjustable to a certain extent you have sliders on the shoulder straps and sliders on the waist straps you can enlarge or tighten to your heart's content yet somewhat of a customizable fit on the other hand sizing on a back plate wing is highly adjustable because you have one single piece of webbing that's thread all the way through the back plate and although this back plate and wing is sized for me right now I could easily tighten these shoulder straps up and pull the waistband straps in and it would fit someone much smaller than gigantic frame so that obviously has implications if you ever want to sell your gear on again but it also makes it highly customizable I don't understand why parents don't get their junior open water divers more accustomed to a backpack wing style where they can get one back plate one wing and then just adjust the harness as the child grows I think that's an excellent idea but no I still see parents buying children jackets Dolby CDs and they start off with like a kid's small to adult extra smalls when adults more to an out on medium to an adult large or whatever and then they end up going through like 5b CDs in seven years doesn't make any sense to me anyway so that's your basic overview of a jacket star BCD versus a backplate in terms of its features but how do they actually dive what makes them different in the water now with a jacket BCD what you want to be careful of is when you're underwater and you've compensated your points when you've added a little bit of air to your jacket is that you don't get a bond and what I mean by that is that if you roll to one side to look for your buddy or to the pretty fish or whatever it may be all the gas can rush to one side of the jacket and you can end up rolling over and bobbing like a turtle on its back and it can just generally throw off your trim and make you feel less balanced in the water a backlink wing style is a hell of a lot easier to get used to from a trim point of view because all the gas wants to be behind you and as soon as you submerged and you've got your neutral buoyancy under control all that gas in the doughnut is free to circulate around the wing and wants to be at the highest point keeping you in a nice horizontal plane so anytime you lean to look at something or turn your head to look at your buddy it wants to immediately write you again and that's very comfortable I had a recreational student not that long ago who started that his course and did mostly confined dives in a jacket style PCD for reasons I won't get into here halfway through the course we switched him over to a back light wing style and it was like a load taken off his shoulders he instantly got it his trim leveled out and everything was looking really really good underwater with really minimal effort from the student because this wants you to be in the right position with scuba diving whereas sometimes you can get into a bit of a fight with a jacket for cold water diving I definitely want to be using my back length we can set up the main reason for that is the stainless steel back plate which is heavy it's gonna offset the total amount of weight I need for my dry suit which means I'm gonna need to lose less lead and the same can't be said for a jacket start BCD now for wreck diving I also prefer the back plate wing setup and the reason that is because it doesn't put anything in front of you doesn't add any bulk to your chest or to your hips to your waistband like this big chunks of pockets do and that keeps me more streamlined and gives me a better sense of the total amount of space taking up underwater and it allows me to get into those tight engine rooms and through the gaps that I want to do when I'm exploring the inside of a wreck so pretty much all technical divers cave divers and wreck exploration divers would prefer a backplate and wing setup undoubtable but if you're looking to buy your first BCD and you're wondering if star lay or star B is right for you the best way to find out is to drive both so my single biggest piece of advice for anyone looking to invest in their first points to compensating device is to go down to your local dive shop see what they rent ask if they've got the other style to try out to see if they do any gear demo days or try before you buy days where you can take a jacket star BCD for it for a spin and a backplate wing style for a spin and then you can at least see which style you like best and then narrow down you know your budget which brands you want to buy and so on and all the little additional features but really the core decision needs to be do I want style a or style B and what the type of diving am I going to be using for so go out there try both stars and see which one you have the most fun with don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so already just over here I'm going to put a playlist with all of our other gear based videos and below that will be our series of math least Monday videos until next time my name is James this was your divers ready video this week dive safe dive off you [Music]

Channel: Divers Ready

Views: 49,324

Rating: 4.9148073 out of 5

Keywords: james blackman, scuba diving, scuba diver, apeks wing system, cressi travelight bcd, scuba diving videos, cressi travelight, apeks wing review, dive gear, dive equipment, apeks, padi, scuba, diver, open water, scubadiving, scuba certified, scuba certification, scuba gear, cressi, backplate bcd, how to choose a bcd, bcd scuba, simply scuba bcd, best bcd 2019, best bcd 2020, bcd lift capacity, womens bcd, buoyancy compensator, scuba diving gear bcd, bpw, bcd, wing

Id: H5FC_YbJgW4

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019