New to Doubles

[Vtach]

The biggest factor in diving with doubles is experience.  You need to dive the shit out of them.  Spend your first dives properly weighting them and getting them trimmed out.  When you can hold an extended static horizontal stop at 20 feet without a large amount of gas in your wing, you have them pretty well dialed in. Then dive them shallow ALOT before heading deeper.  Dive them from shore on easy dives before diving off a boat.  Start learning about valve drills and practice reaching and manipulating all your valves, WITH A BUDDY of course.  You are on the right track for regs and setup and if you have questions, listen to people who have been diving with this setup and why they arrange things the way they do.  GUE/DIR is an excellent reference for basic equipment setup and there is tons of info online.  Don't be afraid to adopt the setup but stay away from the lemming mentality.  Learn and understand why your setup is the way it is and why it works best for your diving and team.  There is nothing worse than someone who regurgitates someone elses thoughts or ideas without fully understanding what they are talking about.  There is a lot of that on both sides of the DIR/Non DIR crowd.

I don't particularly care for the bungee wings for a different reason.  If you have any form of leak from the bladder or an inflator, you may have a difficult time keeping gas in the wing due to the bungee squeeze.  With a non bungee wing you position yourself to help retain gas in the wing despite a leak or failed inflator.  It may be a remote possibility but still possible.  Regardless, make sure to understand the strength's AND weakness' of your gear.

So yeah....I agree...I would much rather be out diving and talking smack rather than sitting behind a damn computer....