I'm new to RDA's, and I have a question about how to hit it...or, rather, how NOT to!

[Sed Contra]

So...naturally, after getting an A6 rda, I began hitting it...well...like I used to hit something else censored back in the day.

The problem is that it's destroying my lungs and throat. I love the huge plumes of vapor, but I don't want to be worse off for vaping! Already I've figured out that I need to lower the nic content, so I've gone from 1.8% down to 1.2%, but there has to be a better way to hit this thing!

HELP!

Thanks...

 

[UncleChuck]

You could try stepping down to 6mg (.6%?)

I think of myself as having iron lungs (especially in the realm of something else) but even 12mg was too harsh to be pleasant with RBAs for me.

Also going to a higher VG ratio could help. The harshness of PG seems more pronounced with RBAs, usually I'd be hunting for TH with high nic and 100% PG but with RBAs 50/50 pg/vg with 6mg seems about perfect.

So I assume you mean you are doing lung inhales, right? If so, you can smooth out the hit a little bit by letting some air in through your nose while hitting your PV. That fresh air will meet up with the vapor at the back of your throat and cool the vapor down making it easier on the lungs. I know it sounds crazy but depending on how much air I let in sometimes it actually seems to increase vapor by quite a bit. I usually do this in the morning when my lungs are still a bit green.

 

[Sed Contra]

Thanks, Uncle Chuck. When I first bought the RBA at the local shop, they wanted to watch me hit it...gleefully waiting for me to choke, but my "experience" came in handy and I took it like a champ.

I'm definitely finding that I prefer higher VG stuff. It seems that I'm not so interested in throat hit nearly as much as I find thick vapor production to be satisfying.

Yes, I'm doing full on lung inhales...and it's destroying me! I only know two ways of smoking...cigarettes and I can't remember what else. It seems that I need to learn a third way of hitting a pipe.

Thanks!

 

[Thrasher]

i smoke em like a cigar now inhaling very little actual vapor or not very deep before the exhale. chain vaping like this for close to a year for flavor and still get plenty of rush with 1.8 or 18

 

[UncleChuck]

Thanks, Uncle Chuck. When I first bought the RBA at the local shop, they wanted to watch me hit it...gleefully waiting for me to choke, but my "experience" came in handy and I took it like a champ.

I'm definitely finding that I prefer higher VG stuff. It seems that I'm not so interested in throat hit nearly as much as I find thick vapor production to be satisfying.

Yes, I'm doing full on lung inhales...and it's destroying me! I only know two ways of smoking...cigarettes and I can't remember what else. It seems that I need to learn a third way of hitting a pipe.

Thanks!

I'm really loving the lung inhales, the nic hits way faster than the traditional mouth-lung inhale. You know back when you were a new cigarette smoker and you got a pretty nice buzz after a cig? Or even after smoking for awhile, that first cig of the day gives you a nice buzz, lung inhales are the only way I've found to get that feeling again.

I'm thinking (and this is just a guess) that when doing a mouth-lung draw much of the nicotine is absorbed into your mouth tissue, which takes a bit longer to circulate around. Where as when you do a direct lung inhale, most of the nic is intact and makes it to your lungs, where it has a more direct path. So with mouth-lung inhales your nicotine level slowly rises and you don't really notice it, but with a lung pull you are dumping a bunch of nic at once and you can actually feel it.

There's definitely something different going on because I feel the nic way more on a lung inhale. Doing mouth-lung inhale I can make myself nic sick without ever getting a nic buzz, with a lung inhale 3-4 good lung pulls and I'm buzzing and feel quite stimulated.

Oh one more thing to smooth out the vape, I'm not sure what size airhole you have right now, but with lung inhales most people I've seen prefer super wide open draws. I've found this makes the vape way smoother (probably the same concept as letting a bit of air in through your nose while drawing on it) I have dual 3mm air holes on my igo-W and huge lung draws are smooth as silk, even with a pair of 1ohm coils firing away.

 

[Sed Contra]

I'm really loving the lung inhales, the nic hits way faster than the traditional mouth-lung inhale. You know back when you were a new cigarette smoker and you got a pretty nice buzz after a cig? Or even after smoking for awhile, that first cig of the day gives you a nice buzz, lung inhales are the only way I've found to get that feeling again.

After getting the RDA, while I was testing it at the store, I was certainly "feeling that way" (nice Journey reference, if I do say!). I generally don't like that buzz, though.

As to the airhole issue, I was actually thinking the opposite...lol...I'd rather take a slower, more controlled drag, than have a ton of vapor hit me all at once (I'm reminded of the milk jug in the sink full of water routine that I used to do back in the day that exploited "gravity"). Maybe I need to suck slower, but this thing really puts out.

Looks like I need to do some experimenting, though. Thanks, man.

 

[EmeraldLeo1982]

Hah gravity vaping...that would be interesting.

 

[Sed Contra]

So I just got back from the local shop. I don't have an Ohms tester, so I had the dude there test my RDA to see what the resistance is. It's a dual coil A6 model, and the resistance came in at 1.1 Ohms. That seems VERY low to me. I'm using a Twist. I don't know how else to put it, but in sound engineering terms, it seems to me that 1.1 Ohms doesn't give me much "head room," whereas perhaps 3.0 Ohms would give me more to work with, making it smoother instead of 1.1 Ohms from the get go. In other words, 1.1 Ohms doesn't let me use the dial on the Twist, whereas 3.0 Ohms would. Does that make sense?

 

[vapo jam]

So I just got back from the local shop. I don't have an Ohms tester, so I had the dude there test my RDA to see what the resistance is. It's a dual coil A6 model, and the resistance came in at 1.1 Ohms. That seems VERY low to me. I'm using a Twist. I don't know how else to put it, but in sound engineering terms, it seems to me that 1.1 Ohms doesn't give me much "head room," whereas perhaps 3.0 Ohms would give me more to work with, making it smoother instead of 1.1 Ohms from the get go. In other words, 1.1 Ohms doesn't let me use the dial on the Twist, whereas 3.0 Ohms would. Does that make sense?

ummm... where to start...

first get an ohm checker. you can get multimeters pretty cheap at radio shack. you ABSOLUTELY NEED ONE if you're going to be rebuilding.

second, DO NOT USE A TWIST WITH AN RDA. period. even if you do build a "safe" coil, jarring it, dropping it, etc. could shift the coil and create a short somewhere. it's much safer to use a mod that just won't fire if the resistance is too low, or a mech with a fuse or something like that.


EDIT: sorry, don't mean to be mean about it, but this really isn't safe, especially if you've never dealt with rebuildables before.

 

[gammaxgoblin]

Just started with an rda myself and vaping at 22 watts is causing nic headaches and some coughing. I'm gonna step down to .6mg from 1.2 to alleviate the headaches. And maybe come up out of sub ohm territory to alleviate coughing. Anyway fwiw.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 4

 

[gammaxgoblin]

So I just got back from the local shop. I don't have an Ohms tester, so I had the dude there test my RDA to see what the resistance is. It's a dual coil A6 model, and the resistance came in at 1.1 Ohms. That seems VERY low to me. I'm using a Twist. I don't know how else to put it, but in sound engineering terms, it seems to me that 1.1 Ohms doesn't give me much "head room," whereas perhaps 3.0 Ohms would give me more to work with, making it smoother instead of 1.1 Ohms from the get go. In other words, 1.1 Ohms doesn't let me use the dial on the Twist, whereas 3.0 Ohms would. Does that make sense?

Yes, checking ohms is requisite when building coils. It's a small investment from the local auto parts store or home improvement store to be safer. I've read anything under 1.5 ohms it's too low to safely use on an ego vv device. Plus you need to know what resistance yields what results so you can duplicate or avoid favorable or unfavorable results.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 4

 

[Sed Contra]

So...the RDA kept heating up like crazy at low voltage, so I opened it up to take a look. One of the wires was all crusty, but the other one cleaned up nicely. I took out the bad one and left the good one in. Whereas the resistance was 1.1 Ohms with both, I just got a Provari Mini today and took advantage of the opportunity to test the Ohms myself; it tested at 2.5 Ohms, which really surprised me. My understanding is that dual coils worked like this: 2 Ohms + 2 Ohms = 2 Ohms, but now I'm wondering if this one was set up differently (series vs. parallel?). It doesn't make sense to me that two coils would add up to 1.1 Ohms, but one reads at 2.5 Ohms.

Any thoughts?

One observation is that the RDA isn't heating up excessively anymore, which is great! It still heats up when I hit it alot, but not like it was before. I wonder if the other coil was touching the inside of the cap or something.

 

[grindle]

A proper dual-coil (parallel) halves the resistance.
2+2=1, 3+3 =1.5, 4+4=2.

A 3ohm coil is too high for a Twist if you like anything past 8watts and 1.1ohm was wayyyyyy too low for the Twist, you were battering the circuit and the battery into providing too much power, which causes everything to overheat.
ProVari will be safer but ProVaris are only just about okay for dual-coils because of it's watt limit. 7watts per coil is a bit meh, especially with NETs.