Reddit mentions of Aquatec Scuba Diving Single Tank Back Pack Assembly

There are people that dive without a BCD, just a backpack like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Aquatec-Scuba-Diving-Single-Assembly/dp/B000KD7DJS/

It can be done quite effectible in warm waters where your exposure suit won't change your buoyancy much.

An instructor I know, this summer was diving to 30m with a 7mm semy-dry and no BCD. He had no troubles at that depth or maintaining neutral buoyancy during the safety stop at 5m. He has a very good buoyancy control, I can't even dream of doing that!! But if you are that good, the product is alright although is nothing new.

Wow, this is really revealing in terms of just how much dive training has been (ahem) "streamlined" over the decades.

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My first formal class met for a full evening once per week for ten weeks. Each session was 4 hours (sometimes a bit longer) and was split between classroom and pool; in retrospect, I'd call it easily 12-15 classroom hours and another 30 pool hours, not counting "arrive early" time.

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This 'arrive early" time meant that we were expected to not sit around waiting for the instructor at the start of each pool session - instead, we were to get in the pool whenever we arrived and just swim laps (freestyle; no gear) until the instructor & staff showed up & unloaded the dive gear. Guidance there was that we could stop after we'd swam a 1/4 mile.


Plus there was of course, our self-directed reading as well as homework on our own. My textbook was merely the 1977 NOAA Diving Manual.



The OW checkouts were done on weekends on top of that, which was five tanks over three weekend day trips. Bottom times weren't huge, but I'd still figure around 2 hours of bottom time.

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For the OP, my recommendation would probably be to do some "Book learning" so that you get comfortable with the physics and principles, and then find a good mentor to do some kinda "refresher-like" pool dives and then some OW dives. Ironically, it sounds like what's needed the most is some self-confidence in your own abilities, which is what the "old school" training used to apply with various pool confidence drills, such as the NAUI Bailout and "Ditch 'N Don". Granted, modern BCD-based dive gear isn't conducive to doing these sorts of "Gear off/on" sorts of exercises, but if you want to have some quasi-retro fun, you can buy an old style backpack and skip using any BCD and have some safe supervised fun in a pool.