Scuba Tech Tips: BCDs - Jacket Style vs Wings - S04E13

hi divers Alec Pearson Ally Pierce scuba gain another tech tip and I want to say first of all thanks for all your suggestions most of these suggestions that I'm sharing now at this point after I don't know 75 or 100 tech tips after all of those are suggestions that come from you my viewers and I think it's fantastic I'm running out of ideas there's no lack of ideas I just need help okay so today we're going to talk about a very common topic a very important topic and one the lot of you have asked about and that's be CDs specifically everybody knows the BCD is points you're compensating device for those of you who don't but anyway BC let us say BC differently for those of you who have been asking for me to compare stab jacket jacket style B CDs to wings to obesity's we're going to do that first a little bit of history B CDs that of course it didn't exist initially and I think I've showed you if you've seen any of my vintage scuba playlist you have probably seen some of the vintage B CDs three different B CDs there were this old life vests we put around our neck you could a little bit of air into them and pop them up and it will help you be retired on the service and there weren't very popular because real divers didn't wear them but anyway eventually they become more and more popular and then they became a BCD the difference between a left jacket the BCD bunch of compensating device is that with a point to compensate device of BC you can actually put air in and let air out easily so now putting air in makes you more positive you start to rise when he wrote mission wanna you start to sink she couldn't adjust your buoyancy points you compensating is where that word came from pointy compensating device so now we have a wonderful piece of diving equipment I wish I'd had one when I started diving in the late fifties boy we used to pick up a stone to get down and I forget what we did to get up finding the devil I guess but anyway it was pretty interesting I wish I had it then they're fantastic debris is mandatory equipment for several reasons first of all is mandatory all the training agencies recognized those wonderful for safety of divers it makes diving a much and also be CDs now perform several functions yes they provide they provide bunch of compensation they also hold the tank as there's no backpacks anymore the BCD holds the tank so if you want to take the tank with you great idea you wear your BCD and there's other functions they provide as well someone have pockets and all kinds of stuff B CDs have become mandatory equipment for many many reasons now initially the point you're compensating device was a jacket style and that the original the very first one back in the 70s was made by Hague by see Quester you know probably more than one company at the same time but anyway Seaquest at one of the very first it was called the adv advanced vest adv BCD and it was really first one that actually was like a jacket she put one arm in and this arm in and he did two belt up around the tummy and off you went and it held the tank so that was it one of the very first ones I'm going to guess that that was in the early 70s there abouts and that particularly buoyancy compensator the jacket style or stab jacket stab is short for stabilizing stabilizing jagged point but companies make a big names don't they so stab jacket BCD is the most common style used today all recreational divers which means that all divers when they begin their diving career whatever they become later photographers or commercial divers or technical whatever when they start their diving career almost invariably they begin with stabilizing jackets or jackets now B cities it is the most common undoubtedly the type that you used in training your open water dives so when you go traveling around the world it's usually the type that you rent if you still continue to wreck your gear around the world this is a typical stab jacket PCD looks just like this so it's pretty straightforward you see it has two shoulders a back there's a band on the back hold the tank of course and as I say you put on like a jacket so if you're going to put this on you but one arm in here and one arm in over here there's eight and you put it on just like putting on a vest or a jacket and then then you're in there's that simple and once you get it on as you all know because you've used them to do up the tummy and in some cases the the tummy is a cummerbund and I speak padded cumberbund like this you know what yeah that's nice looks good in some cases with color bun and they have a belt as well there's a belt on here and you snap that together in front you see and then the almost invariably have adjustable shoulder straps now so you pull the shoulder strap down that makes it nice and tight here on both sides and and you're almost in and a lot of them also have a clip across the chest the corporate contest is is it we'll talk about that in just a moment critically so this is a fairly typical stab jacket or jacket style BCD now one of the most important things about this BC that differentiates it from other pcs and specifically from the other style of BC the wing or a back mounted BC is that this BC has air all around this is air cell so they're there so all around your tummy all the way around their cell up the back both sides of the back and as you over the shoulders to so there's a lot of air all around you most particularly the fact that this air comes around your tummy so you see when this buoyancy compensator is inflated it has air all around your tummy and it lifts you up like this to the surface and set you on the surface it's almost as if you're inside a an inner tube you know a tube occur to you know you use those for water sports it's almost as if your inner tube you're sitting in a tube and you have air all around you in the whole jungle surface very comfortable and I can go when you want to descend you just simply take the the play the mechanism pull this off of here that's going to sound great so I can get this up in here because you have to have a way up and you're like you're straight up and you press the button on the end and the air comes out down you go don't forget your regulator gosh put your regen and down you go off you go guys if you want to ascend go back to the service you press the button on the side which is connected by a hose to your regulator let's say you're into the BC and up you go and then as you become more experienced good divers or experienced divers they have learned to use the BCD very carefully as little as possible okay so don't put much air in I don't dump very much here just a little bit so early divers were stabbed jackets you should say well I don't want one of those things because they take air from my tank I don't want it using up my air from my tank I want to stay down a long time well a good diver with practice who good buoyancy control and knows how to use a BCG very carefully in fact uses less air and someone who doesn't use the BCD because the BC you will hold you in place you don't to keep thinning using those big muscles not to keep fighting the water and moving around to very very little bit of air if you're carefully weighted little bit bitter there and you can stop stay right there and hang there you don't use much air get a little bit out a little bit a little bit out you slowly start to sink a little in in your story start to rise to see so actually being very careful and the way that you use the buoyancy compensator actually saves air so that's a pretty standard stab jacket boychik compensator the amber we have rings on them different rings hanging down there to hang different things you can hang your safe second I usually hangs up in this area this places on the bottom rings on the bottom down here to hang a slate or maybe a light almost always have pockets this is a pretty standard by the jacket so there's a big pocket there you know you can you can put gold bars and and the seashells in there no I'm kidding you won't find it a gold bars and you shouldn't touch anything more in life of course but if you need to put a pair of gloves in there to keep them out of the way on the surface or you want to carry a slave or something else you've got packaged to do that with now most objects today also have some form of weight integration what I mean is that for many many years we've been wearing a weight belt so all of our weight was on a belt around our tummy and the boys accountant said there was a separate piece of equipment the two were not related the weights allows you to sync the BC brought you up and moved you up and down as you wanted to well the last 10 or 15 years what's happened is that the buoyancy compensators have had provision to carry some of the weights weight belts are not comfortable if anybody tells you he's rather wear a weight belt move away that person is dangerous particularly if you're diving in cold water is up here I'm in Canada so if you dive up here and we're wearing a thick wetsuit or perhaps a dry suit it's not uncommon for us to be wearing 25 pounds of weights now I know that's crazy you guys down the south and you swim down the Caribbean or South Pacific and you got you a nice little skimpy little three millimeter a shorty on and you were you yet you're wearing three or four or five pounds of weight you're saying 200 pounds we work on the diversity while I'm a very good diverse a matter of fact but we have a lecture a seven millimeter wetsuit it's more than twice as thick as the three mil and it's a complete coverage covers your whole body your head your gloves that's extremely buoyant it takes perhaps as much as twenty pounds of weight just to overcome the buoyancy of the wetsuit so that we can get down and then another six or seven on top of that some big guys like you take Kevin for instance when me and Kevin go scuba diving he probably wears about 30 35 pounds of weights I wouldn't would I wouldn't go to one minute and if he's wearing his dry suit which is seven millimeter neoprene over his whole body plus it has air inside my gosh 30 35 40 pounds of weight would be the right amount of weight and not really that uncommon it makes it an awfully uncomfortable weight belt very very uncomfortable many times after he died I've come back and my back was killing me because the weight belts in your back you see and your horizontal so you end up like this so most points of cotton sir is the last few years of some provision for carrying weight your weight integrated the early styles the weight integration had a big fancy pocket here with the pocket you put the weights in a snap it into place that way if you wanted to dump them you could pull it out and drop it to the bottom and and and you would gain points you could drop your weights most buoyancy compensators now a little simpler system now this is an interesting one a close look at this I'm not even again there Kevin but in this particular BC you see this it has the big pocket for carrying stuff but it has another pocket down here and you see it here and this pocket is zippered zippers and then and then there's room in there put a weight I had to wait I will show you just take a wait now they take a soft wake we recommend if you're using a weight inside your BC that you use these shock filled bags or by the way get the good ones there are cheap ones and and the lead shot is not sealed so the lead shot actually you can tell you get wet and pour it over your hand gray stuff comes out not good not good for the environment now but most LED shot the good ones are sealed now so you take this soft weight and you put it into that pocket you see and then your zipper closed and there you know your weights in there and if you needed to drop it well then you just have to pull on this and you see what happens and the weight falls out I've got now these weight pockets and you don't have to have those soft weights we suggest you soft weight because they're easier on their weight pocket they won't wear through the BC but you can just as easily lose their use it and lose just as easy use a lead weight okay we only use plastic coated lead weights up here and we they're better for the environment too but you know if you're still using the old lead weight lead lead weights they work fine she's actually put a leg weight in there same thing zip it up you can have as much as six seven or eight pounds in these pockets you see GBC would carry 10 12 14 16 maybe as many as 20 pounds I hear to be careful because if you try to put too much weight in the BC it's hard on the BC it makes the scuba unit very very heavy so you start to lose the advantage of getting the weight off the weight belt if your scuba unit with the tank and their regulator and the BC and all your weights weighs 40 or 50 or 60 pounds that's not going to be very much fun and and it also as I say is very hard on the points you compensate because it's made of materials made of cloth you carry around with all that weight yanking down on it so I don't recommend if you're using a lot of weight over 20 pounds that you necessarily but all the wage and UBC can be done right just be very careful doing that I have no problem myself with wearing a small weight belt 6 or 8 pounds so I put maybe 10 or 12 pounds on the BC and then have a small wiped up ass perfect small weight that's no problem but that's basically what I wanted to show you this now and that is a stab jacket BC to skip this weight out of here pull la oh there you go comparable weight pockets so there's a stab Jacobi she's pretty straightforward and the weights are centered in this area around the waist just like a weight belt she put air in you go up you put air in eager now that AR up shooter - just that simple okay now let's take a look at the wing type back mounted or sometimes they're called horseshoe type of BC's essentially the difference is only in the placement of these those air cells let me take this up and I think you have shown you before when you were to think of BC ah don't try to struggle out like this I tighten all these up is hard to do and I want to see you doing a dance on the on the boat the slippery boat when I bounce you just reach up here just click that it comes apart now you can reach back and set your tank down get your body to grab it and slip it off like that no fighting for answering around on the day but I hate to see that what a big diver is trying to get his BC up and he's dancing like this on one leg so try not to do that take a look at a wing type of BC I got one right here interesting enough this BC is one of our favorite B C's for travel one of the big advantages of a wing type or back mounted Aircel BC is that they're generally lighter than a staff jacket staff jackets made a heavier material and of course the air so it's quite a bit bigger goes right around your body let's take a look at this BC and and and we'll see if we can spot some differences let me open up a little bit first of all and that's the same type of shoulder straps I'm going to put this on and you'll see what some of the differences are all right you see you still got shoulder straps it looks like a like a staff jacket to the head point let me slide this on and once we have it on you'll see what the difference is okay what's the difference well some things are exactly the same let's deal with that first it does have a waist belt I'm just want to get it stretched out here a little bit like that wait now goes around your tummy you seem like that very cool there's no cumberbund that big wide padded velcro cumberbund doesn't have that this particular BC is super lightweight this is one of the best travel be season that we have found very popular for travel and this is almost half the weight of that pretty normal BC we had before we have some pcs that are much heavier than that so this BC is incredibly late so it just has a stretchy belt push around your tummy and you just pull it like that to make it snug well it's on just that simple well don't forget to pull the shoulder down that's the same that's the same you pull the shoulders down like so that tightens it up on your body so it's nice and soft on your body this BC does have a cross chest stretch and you know if you if you like this idea great use it the only thing I suggest particularly if you're a big guy like Evan over there big guy is don't pull this tight you need to maybe understand the reason for the cross chest strap this is not the hold to BC on this is not to make a tight on body it's not it's not for that some some divers had them something because these pcs are sometimes used with heavy plates we can talk about that sometime sometimes you use with double tanks with a lot of weight on the back some divers don't have nice big square shoulders like me and they were Indian don't make faces Kevin and then and they thought that maybe the straps are going to slide off the shoulders you see so as they started putting this strap hold the shoulders on that's all it's for it's just to keep these shoulder straps from falling off your shoulders well it's not going to happen you see even though this is loose these can't go any further so don't call this too tight if you pull it too tight on a mobile and you're going to get puffing and panting underwater and it's going to squeeze your chest oh my gosh what's happening I don't I think I'm having a heart attack so don't make this cross chest strap any tighter than absolutely necessary remember this therefore should to keep these straps from falling off that's all this for don't do any more than that so it's on what do you notice right away hey I don't have anything look there's nothing you're fining me tickle take a picture of my front Kevin my best side there's the straps there's nothing there look there's no package is nothing in front so it's very comfortable if you need to move underwater you're doing things working or whatever you're doing it's very very easy and comfortable to wear you don't seem to have any bulk in front of you at all of course that's because that's all behind it's all back there let's take a look at the back if you look at the back you'll see right smack in the middle it's a tank strap yeah so in that respect it's exactly the same it holds the tank onto your back there's a couple other things back that I want to point out but you can see if I turn around how slim and how how simple this buoyancy compensator style is it's very very slim now everything's are compromised if you haven't discovered that yet you young people out there you will everything in life is a compromise and this is a compromise in order to get a super lightweight BC that's easy to travel with easy to use something has to change and usually there's a compromise something has to be given up so what was giving up you're you know one thing there's no compromise I'll uncover mine was kind of nice but it wasn't all that essential it did weigh two pounds so we got rid of that shave two pounds and there's one less thing to do up and you don't really need it most cases you're wearing a suit so this strap is quite right on your body is quite comfortable you don't need that cummerbund what else is missing no pockets that's right there's no pockets so if you do find a gold bar you're going to have to carry your teeth I guess there's no pockets on these BCS if you are a diver that uses a pocket a great deal if you carry extra accessories and so on that can't clip onto the BC then you can buy a package for just a few dollars you can actually buy a pocket that goes on as an adult right here and hangs down your solid pockets and there's mesh pockets so you don't have to live without a pocket but the boy should consider does not have pockets in his design okay now couple more things on wearing shape but this BC but I need to get a tank you just hang around for one minute I'll be right back okay I'm back I was going to go get a tank to show you how those bc works but i'm here on the tech department you don't let me get at uncle got all kinds of air so I hooked up my low-pressure inflator to the inflator so what I want to show you is the difference in how these be seasoned late now you know that with the with the stamp checker how we don't plates they are around your tummy air up the side shop it goes and then squeeeeeeze sometimes two depending on the style that you have but watch this I want you to Kevin do your job Kevin I was getting close to those bungees you those bungee cords right here in the air cell and you see how compact and close to my body goes that air cell death watch this okay there we go how about that so now you can see that although when you first looked at this BC it didn't look as if the ear cells were very big now you can see that the hair cells are very big this BC has the same amount of lift as a standard same size step jacket or jacket on BC 35 to 40 pounds of there's lots of lift there look at that there's lots of it you can also see now why it's sometimes called a horseshoe style you see can you see it's got a bit of a shape of a horseshoe use your imagination a bit of a shape of a horseshoe so this is a back mount or a wing type or a horseshoe style of buoyancy compensator the essential difference is that all the air is behind you it's back there again there's nothing up here it's not squeezing me because here cell you see is not pushing on my body it's back there around the tank and electing me straight to the surface so from a practical point of view by that I mean diving with these two different types of BC's what's the difference well again you probably have all used a stab jacket so you know what it's like you put a area into it and you go to the surface when you get to the service if you want to float on the surface and you can blow the BC up you know maybe not hard not completely for but a lot of air in it and you can sit in the service and look around like you're inside of a little boat your own little boat your own little ENTER to sitting I'm looking around which is the way you ought to be okay it's quite comfortable quite safe and you can let a bit of air out and you can fin or whatever you need to do with it with a wing style there back mounted BC it's a little bit different look at me from the side okay now picture a scuba tank back there as you see where I am here and the air is right in the middle can you see a practical problem with this type of BC that's right all the air is back there so as you put air into it the air wants to go to the surface it drags me along with it but as it does so I tend to tip forward so they have often been comments by divers who say I don't want to use one of those wing B C's because well they give you a buoyancy control but they tip you forward and it seems that that is the case not necessarily here's a big difference from a practical point of view if you would like to have a wing type BC and there are some advantages to them they're deathly and I'm not not talking so much about technical divers I'm not talking about the advantages such as interchangeable wings yep you can get different wings or interchangeable packs you ask you to a different package you get aluminum ones you get heavy singers to you once I'm not talking about having singles or doubles or even triple tanks I'm not talking any of that I just mean for a recreational diver just a diver out there having fun what are the differences well if you have us this type of BC a wing type of BC you have to weight it properly that's right if you put the weights properly into this BC then you can overcome that tendency for it to float like this let me show you what I mean I'm going to take this off a little bit of error to the two and it's kind of nice if you watch it you'll see you go like this you see those bungee cords pull it back in there pretty neat and it becomes small and compact easy to travel easy too easy to move around with and here we go again I'm going to take this BC off and you remember I told you the easy way to do that oh the chest strap once we get a chest drag take that off and around the side like this so now I have the VCR floating behind me in the water or whatever so here's what you need to know if you decide that yeah I think the tribal is winged IPC's okay here we go again tank is here right you're here clear now you'll notice that this has weight pockets on the front yes it does it has weight pockets right here on the front so it's assume for a moment that you use oh let's say that you use 12 pounds away okay 12 pounds is a good enough show you it all about this way pocket and it is zippered you don't have to open and show but the wrong style here Kevin close that back up but you open the top this is a zipper tops you open this up and you drop it this is the three-pound soft weight become a different sizes two threes and fives you drop that three pound weight and on that side and zip it closed okay again with this type if you want to drop that weight you just squeeze it in phone sir I'm just really saying put that over there on this side so now we have six pound rate three pounds of three pounds and those weights are right on the side right here okay that's not really that good because it's not going to help it's still going to pull you forward a bit uh-huh but look back here look back here on the side of the tanking is here Kevin what's this area oceanic five-pound max nan da popo wait this does not have clips on us you open this up okay and you take one of those three pound weights and you put it back here okay on the side of the tank and zip it up and one over here zip that put a three pound weight and so now you have 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 is 4 3 is 12 pounds that's what you need that's what you found is you might have weight that you need but it's spread differently than with the same jacket the stamp Jake it was all right here it's okay though because you had air right there with this one you put 3 pounds there 3 pounds there close to the front and then 3 & 3 at the back close to the tank as so well it makes a big difference now when you put air this BC it has a bit of weight pulling forward and a bit of weight pulling backward so that's what yeah you're right it goes straight up like that here you go with it so when you get to the service you're floating around like you're looking you're hunters like so so the critical thing to ensure that you are safe and comfortable using a wing type or a back mounted bunch of compensator is weight placement you cannot put all the weights in the front if you're using a weight belt you have to be sure that they're spread back around the sides like this directly underneath the air cell if you're using the built-in weight pockets some weight to the front some to the back so again you have weight in front of the other cell and some behind yourself so the air cell goes straight up it's not being pulled forward only or backward only it's being pulled down and the air cell goes up how much weight you put in the front in the back I have no idea you have to find out this is one thing I discovered I used wing beats these years and years and years ago and when they were entirely different from what type of that it wasn't a great experience but with these new wing be seized and I'm quite pleased with mine I use this style here quite plate it's so light four and a half pounds like it doesn't exist a sticker dai bagans not even there it's fantastic that's why look wait look and it's so comfortable there's no bulk there's nothing at all I have one little pocket I've added two so I can carry whatever gloves or whatever want to carry me it's a wonderful PC but anyway I took me a while I wear about - about 14 pounds it took me a little while to figure out where the 14 pounds would be and I actually found that for me I needed to have six pounds in the front three and three and then I needed had the other eight pounds at the back back here okay I don't know if I'm a little portly or what it is but for me and the tank I'm using and the BC end of a house I put a little more to the back not as much to the front the more you might find that you need to have two 3s and two fours or whatever you have to play you have to practice there's no formula you can't we have a dice tortoises were to put prove the front through the back hurts here's know he's talking about here's an old best I can guarantee you right now I'm standing here looking at Kevin I can guarantee you that if Kevin used one of these species his weight placement be entirely different he would probably have about forty pounds on the back of nothing on the front no I'm kidding sorry keV but the weight placement would be a lot different he would probably have more weight to the back a little less the front than I do but only he will know that this buddy can't tell him your wife can't tell you you know you have to figure it out for yourself it took me about four maybe five dives before I finally got it right and when I got it right uh it was like heaven I can hover instantly I don't go to the service and look around like a lay flat and summer long just off the bottom like it was fantastic just fantastic that go tell you an interesting story I was diving in Barbados in the fall last fall and I using this BC for one of the first times after 2/3 dies with my five millimeter full suit I got a perfect pops fantastic every had a half a dozen dives and I was a happiest diver in the ocean everything was perfect the points he was unbelievable I could do anything I wanted to the BC didn't give me a problem we decide to make a night dive late one night very very hot in Barbados at that particular time to get down to the parking lot I'm ready to put our gear on and I said to my wife I said it's so hot I'm not going to wear my wetsuit you see where this is going I put the BC on without the wetsuit that I've been wearing up till that time terrible day I felt like I was a beached whale I was flopping the tank kept flopping over I couldn't keep up right I couldn't hover it was just a dreadful dive I couldn't figure out I thought I was doing something wrong I thought my Tancred slip no my buoyancy distribution had changed I would I should have changed awakes a little bit to plate until I got it right with no wetsuit on that's how important the weight distribution weight placement with a stab jacket be see if you do that I think you're loved lighter more compact easier to wear easy to travel with I think you'd real of it so there's some differences between the stab jacket type BC and the wing type BC you've been asking about this I hope that's helped a little bit now we need some more comments dr. sue Alec Pierce scuba

Channel: Alec Peirce Scuba

Views: 148,142

Rating: 4.9144278 out of 5

Keywords: underwater, scuba, sea hunt, diving, bcd, wings, air bladder, trim, Seaquest, ADV, scuba 2000, alec, peirce, pierce, tech, tips, tip, vintage, sea, hunt, remembered, dive, skin, stab, jacket, tank, band, wing, bc, weight, integration, distribution, soft, hard, back, inflator, stabilizing, safe, safety, comfort, style, mount

Id: QKODtJJ_6e4

Length: 29min 1sec (1741 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2016