New Equipment Wish List

[Chris H]

Go and get a backplate and wing from Keith. Sell your other BC because you will never want to dive it again. Use the money you get from the BC to buy a long hose for your primary, and maybe bands for the doubles that you will want after you dive them for the first time and you are properly weighted.

Keep one of the Al 80s for deco gas, and maybe a 40 too. That will come later, but don't get rid of useful stuff you already have.

Get yourself a pair of PST 80s and double them with a good isolation manifold. You shouldn't really need bigger tanks than that, but I seem to recall somebody joking about your air consumption last weekend, and you are a bigger guy so do whatever you think works as far as tank size goes. Divepoint Scuba in Stevens Point has really good PST prices. Have somebody show you how to set it up so you can reach your valves and find all of the things you need to find. There is tons of stuff on the net, but it is nice to have a real person help.

Come to Deep Blue this summer, take DIR-F and then practice, practice, and practice some more. Get all of the basics figured out and then worry about the technical part of it. I have no idea what your experience is, but I tend to not want to be a card collector, and actually get something out of my training. When you think you are comfortable with all of the basics, take a Deco Procedures/Advanced Nitrox course with a good instructor, call Deep Blue, and you should get a pretty good idea of what you are doing well and what you need to work on. If you can get through the DIR-F and build on those skills from the beginning, you should be in really good shape. I don't want to start another DIR anti DIR war, but in my opinion a course like DIR-F certainly won't hurt your skills.

I'm planning to do DIR-F this summer, but the rest of that explanation sounds a lot like the path I've taken. It doesn't make it the right way to go but I think I'm an OK diver. If there is one skill that I could choose to work on the most it would be buoyancy. Getting buoyancy and trim figured out is a HUGE accomplishment. Seeing somebody do a deco stop and remain horizontal and nearly motionless, without hanging on a line, is pretty cool. Make that a goal and practice, practice, and practice some more.