BP/W with weight belt

[Lorenzoid]

. . .

I also am amazed that people come on this board and say that a diver is wearing too much lead (and thus is not diving a balanced rig) if they can't just swim up from depth without dropping anything. That is ridiculous because a diver with a double layer 7 mm suit with maybe a third layer of a hooded vest is going to get a huge swing in bouyancy at a depth of 80 or 100 feet. . . .

Is it really very DIR to do this kind of diving without a drysuit? Ideally, if your wing fails, you don't ditch lead, you add air. Am I wrong?

 

[danvolker]

Is it really very DIR to do this kind of diving without a drysuit? Ideally, if your wing fails, you don't ditch lead, you add air. Am I wrong?

This is tempered a bit with the initial use of DIR...initially, it was a collection of all the best ideas "for cave diving", and particularly for "deep cave diving" where the mouth and start place for the cave, is deeper than 99.9 % of the divers on this board will ever dive....lot less the next couple of hours diving at these depths. However, George Irvine did a great deal of Ocean diving as well, and plenty of spearfishing. So DIR was easily adapted to ocean.
The idea of using drysuits became obvious for our tech dives, because wetsuits compress and don't keep you warm at 280 feet deep, and because of the nasty buoyancy swing --which all of us "DIR's" had "solved" with our drysuits. That being said....George hated using his drysuit "if he did not need to"....and to this day, will only go out and dive with Bill Mee and myself, if the water is warm enough so that he does not have to put up with all the nonsense of a drysuit....the drysuit was all well and good if it was the ONLY intelligent way to deal with a very deep and/or very cold dive...but to us it was nonsense for warmer than 72 in depths less than 130.

And each of us was always able to swim up without a functional bc....and both George and I used to enjoy using the old harness with no BC , and just a steel 72. However, the ease of perfect buoyancy when swimming slowly near the bottom, went up dramatically with the Halcyon 18 pound lift wing...so once Carmichael invented that....it no longer made any sense to dive without a wing( bc). Prior to this, we could be perfect in buoyancy and trim w/o a bc, when the water was 80 degrees or so and we were wearing lycra and no wetsuit... but this limited us to diving a few months out of the year
Anyway, this is the DIR foundation for this.

 

[decompression]

Agreed, I've seen proof where it just doesn't make sense to deep dive in a wetsuit for the average diver. Don't have the tools? Don't build the deck.


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[halocline]

Pretty sure the accepted meaning implies that the bp/wing/regs/can light...all of the rig, is something you can swim up to the surface if you have a total wing failure. A weight belt would be outside of this discussion, as ditchable weight is not part of the discussion of the rig itself being balanced. .

Yes, I've heard this too and it basically requires splitting up weight between diver and rig, in cold water anyway.

When I think of weight distribution, I think of moving weight around between hips and back to help with trim considerations. I don't think of that term being used for splitting up weight between diver and BC. But who knows...

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I know this would never happen in a million years in todays diver training but,
I always thought it would be cool to train a new diver oposite from how they are trained now in relation to BC usage.
Why not train divers from the get go (in proper and controlled conditions of course) to dive without BC's starting out in baby steps, maybe even full freediving skills first, then after they become proficient at no bc diving then introduce the use of a BC device (wing) to their kit.
This would show them that a wing really is a luxury and was/is mean't to only take the edge off heaviness at depth. Most new divers trained these days don't realize that. Even the top DIR trained (the inventors!) of DIR can and have dove without BC's (for fun recreational dives not too deep), and from Dan's testimony the 18 Lb. wing came later and was used to keep them from crawling around on the bottom. But, they did know how to dive without one so the wing was just icing on the cake and a luxury.
I think the whole concept of BC's in todays standard training world has become corrupted to the point of ugliness - both in training and what the standard product has morphed into. Way way abused in my opinion.

 

[mruseless]

What would be the benefit of training this way?

I know this would never happen in a million years in todays diver training but,
I always thought it would be cool to train a new diver oposite from how they are trained now in relation to BC usage.
Why not train divers from the get go (in proper and controlled conditions of course) to dive without BC's starting out in baby steps, maybe even full freediving skills first, then after they become proficient at no bc diving then introduce the use of a BC device (wing) to their kit.
This would show them that a wing really is a luxury and was/is mean't to only take the edge off heaviness at depth. Most new divers trained these days don't realize that. Even the top DIR trained (the inventors!) of DIR can and have dove without BC's (for fun recreational dives not too deep), and from Dan's testimony the 18 Lb. wing came later and was used to keep them from crawling around on the bottom. But, they did know how to dive without one so the wing was just icing on the cake and a luxury.
I think the whole concept of BC's in todays standard training world has become corrupted to the point of ugliness - both in training and what the standard product has morphed into. Way way abused in my opinion.

 

[halocline]

Why not train divers from the get go (in proper and controlled conditions of course) to dive without BC's starting out in baby steps, maybe even full freediving skills first, then after they become proficient at no bc diving then introduce the use of a BC device

If all new students were excellent swimmers, confident in the water, and properly weighted I could see an approach like this have some advantages. But that's not the world we live in. The big issue for most beginning students is staying positive on the surface with a big metal tank on your back. Not having some flotation device for those first few OW dives could be disastrous.

I am totally with you that swimming and general water skills (like free diving) are woefully under-emphasized in the typical big agency OW training. As it stands now, anyone can get in a dive class, very likely pass, and that's the whole point. After all, it is a business model that is based on creating new divers to sell gear to.

Then again, only a small percentage of OW students continue diving. So something's not working right, from a pedagogical view.

 

[danvolker]

If all new students were excellent swimmers, confident in the water, and properly weighted I could see an approach like this have some advantages. But that's not the world we live in. The big issue for most beginning students is staying positive on the surface with a big metal tank on your back. Not having some flotation device for those first few OW dives could be disastrous.

I am totally with you that swimming and general water skills (like free diving) are woefully under-emphasized in the typical big agency OW training. As it stands now, anyone can get in a dive class, very likely pass, and that's the whole point. After all, it is a business model that is based on creating new divers to sell gear to.

Then again, only a small percentage of OW students continue diving. So something's not working right, from a pedagogical view.

When I was certified in 1972, by a NAUI Instructor from Great Lakes Divers in the Niagra River ( Buffalo).....We did have to learn snorkeling first ( I already knew this--as did most others that had wanted to scuba dive the moment they were old enough to get certified..some people believe in trying to prepare themselves for a new sport).....When we demonstrated good snorkling skills, we began scuba lessons, with harness and single reg, and j valve....and NO stinking BC.
That's how it used to be done. Buddy breathing you saw your buddy make the OOA sign, and you take a last deep breath, and hand the reg to them out of your own mouth....they take a couple fast deep breaths, and then you get it back and do the same..and you swim to the surface. There is no runaway inflation, because you are both swimming.

This was a business model in those days....but businesses were not hung up by as much greed in those days. Consumers were also not so inclined to expect immediate gratification....but much of this is the market size the business caters to....in the 70's, there were a small number of dive shops, and the existing market was people that would do the prep, and would work for the result....
Today, there are a hundred times more dive shops ( or more), and they expanded the market to include large numbers of people that SHOULD NOT BE DIVERS. They also got large numbers that love diving, get really good at it in time, and may not have had the exposure to diving were it not for the modern system of not requiring any prep work, and of making the whole thing so easy. So I guess it's a LOSS and a WIN ...

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

That's why I said "Never in a million years" would this ever be the norm again, but I can have my pipe dream.
I personally don't see any drawbacks to good swimming skills, good snorkelling/freediving skills, total comfort in the water, buddy breathing as a great focus building and stress management skill even though it's not used any more, and a host of others.
But these things get in the way of making money, time is money.

My whole point was why not teach the additive technique rather than the subtractive technique. You start with nothing then slowly add gear as it is needed, rather than load up the student with tons of over padded fluffy crap and then in time (those that continue) learn about what's really needed and begin to shed and streamline gear after they've already spent a ton on gear.

But like Dan said, scuba is now a major for-profit industry, not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just a fact.
Scuba used to be an almost public service or a non profit style structure. Actually, if you ask some instructors it is still non profit!

 

[decompression]

I think you'd be pleased to see how UTD does an open water course. Primary is the concept that breathing is buoyancy, you'll see lots of breathing and buoyancy skills before a BCD ever hits the back. When these skills are taught they can be practiced during the entire pool session, never on the knees.