Your Sidemount BCD is a harness equipped with a bladder. It also has a system of sliding Drings, bungee chords, clips, and other intricate features. The fit and position of your tank are critical for how your tank looks and is trimmed later in the water. Your instructor might spend quite a while to make sure you have them exactly right.
Sidemount cylinder mounting was first used for cave diving. It has since become more popular in technical diving. They take the dual cylinders apart, one for each, and place them on either side. The diver can't breathe from either cylinder if the regulator fails, but this allows for easier access to valves. Sidemount diving gives the diver an increased horizontal profile and a smaller vertical profile.
My first courses were sidemount and technical sidemount. Sidemount diving, as the name suggests, involves placing your tank my hands and knuckles were covered in cuts by the end of the session. The idea is that you can unclip the tanks and put them out in front of you, Superman style, thus streamlining yourself. After some sizing adjustments to the harness, the afternoon dive went much more smoothly. I was now comfortably unclipping and ‘Superman-ing’ with the tanks. Compared to having doubles on your back, sidemount offers an incredible level of freedom. Matt set up obstacle courses and we were soon flying around them with tanks held out front, barrel-rolling and even swimming upside down.
To become a technical diver, you need to have passion, experience and training. Technical diving can be dangerous if one or more of these factors is lacking.
I just arrived on Malapascua Island, Philippines. I will be working my way up to become a Tec diving instructor over the next two-months. Since the past two years, I have been a recreational instructor in Bali. Now I want to increase my professional diving experience. Sidemount PCB was where I got my first taste of technical diving. Tom West, Tec instructor-trainer and course director at PADI, made me a Tec-50 diver.
Technical diving is a combination of passion, training, and experience. Technical diving is not for those who lack any of these three.
‘Caverns Measureless to Men’ by Sheck Exley, one of the pioneers of cave diving in Florida, USA. He also wore ‘Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival’ which studies many cave diving accidents.
Skills (generally speaking) - The introductory technical diver will practice their trimming and buoyancy using new equipment. This builds the foundation for efficient diving. Once the foundation is in place, students can start to practice locomotion and then move on with more advanced skills.
If you're a Tec diver and want to do sidemount diving, it's important to know how to set up your new rig, adjust it, enter the water with it, and much more.
So, what are you waiting for? Find a TDI instructor near you today: https://www.tdisdi.com/search/?area=instructors
You can share the adventure or give the gift that never ends! PADI eLearning(r), which you can purchase and send to any recipient of your choosing, is now available! It doesn't matter if you want to give the course as a gift, or if you need to assign it to your family members.
Sidemount Diver was one of my most challenging courses. This was due to the fact that my instructor Fiona, from Big Blue Tech, a trusted dive center in Koh Takao, included more skills and dives than I needed. My task load was always manageable so we practiced skills repeatedly. This included mask removable, tank removable underwater, out of air drills, and SMB deployment. We also kept our trim.
The popularity of sidemount diving continues to grow, even when it is open-water. Why? Sidemount diving is very simple and comfortable.
A Twinset diver will always be able to access to both tanks from one single regulator as long as the manifold, or the connection between both tanks is open. To carry a twinset for a smaller person might be a challenge on land. It is quite heavy and sidemounted tanks can be carried individually which sometimes makes it easier to access remote areas or steep slopes to access the water.
from 170 to 350 feet
While conventional scuba diving has a recommended maximum depth of 130 feet, technical divers may work at depths ranging from 170 feet to 350 feet, and sometimes even deeper.
The depth range of oxygen rebreathers (simple closed circuit) is limited to approximately 6 m, beyond which the risk of acute oxygen toxicity rises to unacceptable levels very quickly.
To begin a technical diving course, you must have completed the following prerequisites: a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certificate or equivalent, a PADI Enriched Air Diver certificate or equivalent, and a PADI Deep Diver certificate or proof of at least 10 dives to 30 metres/100 feet.