What event made you head toward/away from DIR?

[FreediveWI]

I got into the whole DIR thing after trying everything else first.

Long before there was DIR, TDI, IANTD, zebra mussels, or the internet we used to dive all the deep wrecks with what would be considered some pretty horrible set-ups by today’s standards. Information wasn’t widely available so trial and error, reading some of the few books that were around, long distance calls to tec divers in other states to get ideas was the norm. Over time my gear slowly started to change as certain gear failed and other things just seemed to work better.

My old solo/deep air set-up consisted of double independent tanks with double BC’s, which was long before OMS was ever around and we used to double stack Zeagle bladders on backpacks, a butt-mounted Diverite Neutralight and more crap bungeed off to the sides of my tanks than I would care to admit.

I used 3 computers because one would always fail it seemed, and it always did so when I had at LEAST 45 mins of deco left to do. It wasn’t until Dr. Richard Boyd clued me into Canadian Navy tables that I switched to them- as I never did trust the US navy tables after seeing so many divers get bent on them. I now use other tables but those got me through a lot of deep dives.

My regs and SPG’s were color coded to match the tank they came from and my camera was clipped off to the D-ring on the left side of my chest- this is where my stage bottles would now go. You can imagine how much simpler things became with a set of doubles manifolded together. There weren’t any isolation manifolds back then and we didn’t have complete trust in the Benjamin manifolds because you could have a tank neck o-ring blow out and lose all of your gas, so we cobbled together these set-ups for complete redundancy.

I switched away from Poseidon regulators early on after mine gave me grief. I was doing a salvage job one winter under 4’ of pack ice with less than 6” of vis on, what is now, the island off of Summer fest. It’s no fun to be diving in really crappy vis, under ice, and then have your reg start shooting ice down your throat. I finished the dive and sold the reg. A few years later another friend of mine, who happens to be a very capable wreck diver/ boat captain/ instructor got a pretty big shock on one the winter charters out to the Willy when his reg froze up and stopped giving him air at depth. By this time most people I knew had already switched to other regs but that sealed it for me- I read about the DIR reasons against such regs at a later date but they had NOTHING to do with why I got rid of mine.

As I tried other things the DIR way just worked out better. I’ve done stages on both sides, but one side is just easier to get around with, even with a bunch of them stacked up. I used steel stages and it just plain sucked. I’d much rather have 4 aluminum 80’s tucked under my left arm than even a single steel 46 banging away at my ankle. Until I tried both ways I thought that the 46’s looked so nice and streamlined, but there’s more to streamlining than the outer dimensions of a tank.

The long hose has worked out so well when having to share air with average divers who get into trouble in a recreational dive, and weren’t even my buddy at the time, that I just stuck with it for tec dives as well. Doing the hose wrap, instead of the bungee, just made good sense.

I’ve dove 80% and pure 02 and have never heard of a good reason for 80% so I now just stick with the 100% 02 for my shallow stops since it’s so much simpler. When it comes to diving simple is a good thing.

I started with Force Fins back in 1982 because I was a skinny kid whose legs would cramp up while wearing my Healthways Scubamaster rocket fins. I should have just gone with a softer fin at the time, like a USD Rocket, but these were the softest around and I went for the overkill. I switched back to Turtle fins for my drysuit so I could dump the ankle weights and get more push from my fins when I frog kick. I tried spilt fins for a very brief time, but they kick the same way as force fins, but are longer and get in the way.

My favorite fins for all types of scuba diving are still freediving fins. You can get around inside a wreck if your careful, there are even guys who have done some pretty amazing cave dives in them, and they will give you lots of power when fighting any kind of current. The latest models will even allow you to pick the blade stiffness to match your leg strength. There is even a company that makes a fiberglass blade that’s white so you can set the white balance of your digital camera underwater with them. 

Backplates and wings were much more streamlined and comfortable than my Zeagles, Backpacks, Transpac, and other BC’s that I have owned.

A lot of old time divers I know have switched part way, if not completely, over to DIR because it’s just more streamlined and easier- you should have seen Gert’s set-up when he first showed up for my ice and rescue diving classes, but I promised him not to post those pictures.

The rest of the philosophy, not diving deep air, using a proper buddy, staying physically fit, don’t smoke or dive with people who do, came after many dives and a few good “war stories” that are best shared over a beer.

In the end I’ve never believed anything off the net just because it was there, but rather because I tried it, as well as other ways, and it worked for me first-hand.

BTW: I don’t know about what is considered DIR for photography, but I used to able to clip off two camera set-ups, with strobes, and a monopod onto my left chest D-ring, when I didn’t have a stage on there, and still be able to run my scooter around the Milwaukee while having that clipped off to the crotch ring on my Backplate. I never liked the “phone cord” bungee cords since they seemed so convoluted, but I have always used a short double clip lanyard an my cameras- something long enough to clip off on a small boat when climbing out, but still had an extra clip to clip it in close while scootering. On some dives where I had an extra camera with no strobe, as in one set up for macro and another for wide angle, I would clip the wide angle camera off on the butt-ring of my backplate while diving in warm water to keep it out of the way.

Jon