Back Plate Configuration vs. Jacket-style Configuration
In our new, five-episode equipment series, GUE Instructor Dorota Czerny discusses the differences between a GUE-configured equipment set, consisting of a single tank, backplate, harness, wing, and long hose regulator system, and a jacket-style system that is most common in recreational diving. The comparison covers general components and goes into detail about streamlining, fit, and function; weighting options; managing out-of-gas situations in the two regulator configurations; and offers some advice for GUE-trained recreational divers.
The purpose of the series is not only to differentiate the two equipment
Chapter 1 is available now for free on DiveGUE.tv.
Click the image below to start the series.
Episode 1 – Introduction: The guests are entering the stage
In this episode, GUE Instructor Dorota Czerny introduces the two different equipment configurations, outlining the main components of a single tank system on both of them. You will learn the main reasons for creating this video, what the advantage of a jacket-style BCD is, and what the big advantage of the GUE system is. You’ll also get a glimpse of how Dorota got to know the long-hose, backplate configuration and what her first take was on that!
DiveGUE.tv was created to provide a supplementary educational platform for scuba diving enthusiasts. We believe these materials will increase global awareness of GUE training, thereby inspiring divers from around the world to establish and maintain a unified perspective, help ease diver anxiety, enhance class readiness, aid in skill maintenance, and encourage otherwise undecided or unsure divers to seek out training.
DiveGUE.tv is a production of Global Underwater Explorers (GUE), the 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to high-quality diver education and to exploration and conservation of the world’s aquatic environments. Learn more at www.GUE.com/about.
Community
Project Divers Are We
Diving projects aka expeditions—think Bill Stone’s Wakulla Springs 1987 project, or the original explorations of the Woodville Karst Plain’s Project (WKPP)—helped give birth to technical diving….

Header image: Divers positioning a decompression habitat during a recent GUE Project Diver core module. Photo by SJ Alice Bennett, courtesy of GUE.
Diving projects, or expeditions—think Bill Stone’s Wakulla Springs 1987 project, or the original explorations of the Woodville Karst Plain’s Project (WKPP)—helped give birth to technical diving, and today continue as an important focal point and organizing principle for communities like Global Underwater Explorers (GUE). The organization this year unveiled a new Project Diver program, intended to elevate “community-led project dives to an entirely new level of sophistication.” Here, authors Guy Shockey and Francesco Cameli discuss the power of projects and take us behind the scenes of the new program.
Building Community Through Project Diving
By Guy Shockey

Let’s Get to the Core: GUE’s New Project Diver
by Francesco Cameli
