Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on? Welcome to
Divers Ready! We're back once again with another in our series of quick tips, where I try and
pack as much of my scuba diving knowledge as possible into a video 5 minutes or less. So
we do away with the flashy b-roll sequences and all of the jokes and we just get down to
the nitty-gritty. In this week's installment, we are talking about how to mount
accessories onto a backplate and wing setup. This is a viewer-requested video,
hope you get a lot out of it. Let's go. If you're new here please make your next dive
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Now a little while ago I made a video going through my selections for each of my accessories
that I take on every single recreational dive and in the comments of that video somebody put
down that they wanted to see my solutions for mounting accessories on a backplate and wing. So
I figured why not give the people what they want, here we go. I have all my accessories laid out
here - I have my SMB, my compass, my reel, so on and so forth. And I have a backplate and wing
set up here. Apex PSD wing, standard backplate, single-piece webbed harness, pretty much down
at issue. The first thing we got to do is tidy up the regulator. So there's a bolt snap on
the end of the gauge which just goes on to the left hip D-ring and the octopus needs mounting
somewhere so all I do for that is I take a "U", I bring it under my primary and I'm just going
to tuck that up through that D-ring there. Okay, now that takes that D-ring out of commission,
I'm not going to clip anything else to that, otherwise it will trap the octopus and make it not
quick-release. Apart from that, this is my wife's regulator, so that inflator hose is a little bit
too short as you can probably see from there, but whatever this is just a demonstration. My
regulator has the correct length hose on it. So let's start mounting some accessories. Starting
with the one accessory I never dive without, the DSMB. How do you mount this on a backplate
and wing? There are no pockets to shove it in, I don't really want to use a bolt snap and clip it
off. Otherwise, we're gonna end up looking like a Christmas tree underwater with this thing hanging
off of us. So very simply, I make two little loops of bungee that just have an overhand knot in like
this and all I'm gonna do is pull that bungee out and thread my SMB over the top. There's one at the
top there. There's another one at the bottom and as you can see from that, is nice and secure
now. Next up as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about lights, I have a
light I dive with on every recreational dive, it just has a bolt snap on the end of it. Tied with a
caver knot that goes onto my left chest D-ring and then what I'm going to do is take a bungee, or in
this case a piece of elastic, and just feed that over the top of the light. So when I square that
bungee out and away and pull that tight that is not dangling anywhere that is how I have my light
mounted onto my shoulder strap like that. And also that bungee prevents the light from being turned
on accidentally. I have to unclip it take it out and then turn the flashlight on. Next up we have
my reel. What to do with the reel? Well, this is the AP diving buddy reel. A lot of you guys asked
where you can buy it and I said that in an earlier video that wasn't available in the US. I stand
corrected, you can buy it from Silentdiving.com. A lot of people commented on that. Thanks to
all those that helped the other divers out. I don't always have that wrist lament on there. But
it's nice for hanging off of a bag on a drift dive just gives you a little bit of cushioning. Again
recreational setup, not tech setup, before you all start jumping in. And you're gonna see on the
male end of my waist strap another D-ring there. and that just clips off like so. Alright, we're
looking pretty good. Next up we need to mount a knife option. So this has a 2-inch webbing band. I
could slide it onto either of my chest straps but I'm not a big fan of that so what I do instead
is just mount it through my computer strap. Now I know what you're gonna be thinking, now yeah
but if you put it on your computer strap you can only reach it with one hand. What about if you get
entangled with that hand and you can't reach for your cutting tool?That's a perfectly valid point,
but you've got to remember that I'm talking about recreational diving here. When I do a tech dive,
and a penetration dive or any dive where there's the chance of me getting seriously entangled, I'm
gonna be carrying two cutting tools. So I'll have one on each side of the waist belt or one on my
primary and redundant computer, so I can reach one with either hand or I'll have cutting tools
mounted up on top. But for a recreational dive where I'm not going deep inside a wreck, and it's
not you know, super scary, I'm mainly carrying this just to do reef cleanup. So that goes on
the underside of my computer. My computer the Shearwater Petrel, is always risk mounted. I don't
go for any kind of console computers. My theory is that if you have a wrist-mounted computer you're
going to look at it more often. Looking at your computer more often is always a good idea. So easy
cutting device on the back of my dive computer, nice and easy there. Next up I have an analogue
compass for recreational dive navigation, nice and easy. Not that I don't trust electronic
compasses, again I just find things easier to use. The way we were all taught how to use a compass,
so just a very simple wrist-mounted analog compass on the other wrist that I'm wearing my computer on
a recreational dive. And last but not least I have my GoPro. This is a Hero 7, I think I mentioned in
other videos as well that I always carry a camera when I'm diving with students. It's a little bit
of a controversial topic. Should you? Shouldn't you? Yes, you should as long as it doesn't become
the focus of the dive. There is nothing wrong with an instructor taking some photos of their student
for memorabilia sake. There is nothing wrong with shooting video of your students to give them
feedback, but don't make the camera the focus of the dive if you have people you're in the water
responsible for. A couple of people asked what is the mount that I use for this camera? So if I just
remove the GoPro from it. It's made by a company called Telusin, Tallisan. I don't know have a
look at it over there and I found it on Amazon it was like about 12 bucks I'll put a link in the
description below. And it's meant for backpacks, so a harness strap is exactly the same width
as a backpack, two inches. Nice and easy, that just velcros on. I put it up kind of high
and then the GoPro clips in there and then when I'm wearing this rig I've done many a giant
stride off of some very high boats and have never lost the camera. Touchwood, so far.
Slap some fins on my feet, mask on my face, and I'm ready to go diving. Ladies and gentlemen,
I hope you enjoyed this, the latest star quick tip series of videos. That's how I mount my
accessories when I am diving a backplate and wing on a recreational dive. Don't forget to subscribe
if you haven't done so already, and let me know in the comments below what quick tips video should we
make next. Until next time ladies and gentlemen, my name's James. This was your Divers Ready
video for this week. Dive safe, dive often.
