Changing levels during ascent

[Scott L]

Just bring a pack horse, donkey or Llama please.

Which one is DIR?

 

[Rainer]

The one with redundant first letter.

 

[nadwidny]

What is the best way to vent your dry suite when ascending a slow slopping exit point? I am having some difficulty getting air up into my upper torso from my legs and feet

Whatever way it takes to get the air to the spot it needs to be to get out. Don't get hung up on maintaining horizontal when it interferes with practicality.

 

[TSandM]

Well, I think that gets back to the original question in the thread.

If you have weighted yourself so that you have almost no air in the suit at the end of the dive, you really have to work to get that small amount of air up to the valve and out. That's why I like to exhaust the wing first -- then, when I'm in the shallows, I'll have enough gas in the suit to make venting it relatively easy.

When I started diving, I tried to get my weighting to the absolute minimum possible. The difficulty with that is that I would arrive in the shallows with an absolute necessity of getting ALL the gas out of the wing AND suit -- and it's HARD to get everything out of a dry suit. Adding a couple of pounds made life oh so much easier, because now I didn't have to depend on being able to get the suit completely shrink-wrapped in order to hold a shallow stop -- AND I didn't freeze during those stops, either.

 

[leabre]

...If you have weighted yourself so that you have almost no air in the suit at the end of the dive, you really have to work to get that small amount of air up to the valve and out....

...Adding a couple of pounds made life oh so much easier, because now I didn't have to depend on being able to get the suit completely shrink-wrapped in order to hold a shallow stop -- AND I didn't freeze during those stops, either.

TSandM makes a good point. I weight myself to be approximately 2 lbs overweight for similar reasons.

 

[rjack321]

When I started diving, I tried to get my weighting to the absolute minimum possible. The difficulty with that is that I would arrive in the shallows with an absolute necessity of getting ALL the gas out of the wing AND suit -- and it's HARD to get everything out of a dry suit. Adding a couple of pounds made life oh so much easier, because now I didn't have to depend on being able to get the suit completely shrink-wrapped in order to hold a shallow stop -- AND I didn't freeze during those stops, either.

When I first weighted myself I had an empty tank and was standing in shallow water basically shrink wrapped because I was vertical with the shoulder dump not even in the water. I didtched everything I could and descended. Soon discovered its a miserable way to dive.

At the end of an otherwise normal dive, ascend up to ~5-8ft dumping all gas from the wing. Someplace you can stand up. Leave enough gas in the suit to be warm. Dump the tank down to 35bar/500 psi and now figure out how much lead you need.

Or get an instructor to help you futz with your weighing. Having a professional look at how you are balanced (or not) and how much ballast you are carrying and where is much more valuable than all the SB discussions about lead combined

 

[TSandM]

Having a professional look at how you are balanced (or not) and how much ballast you are carrying and where is much more valuable than all the SB discussions about lead combined

+1, assuming that said professional is into doing that . . . my Fundies instructor, bless his heart, and despite how much I love him and owe him, was not good at figuring those sorts of things out.

 

[lamont]

to really effectively dump the drysuit you need to put your feet out and break trim head up, drop your right arm and roll so the dump is higher. you also want to do that motion slowly from foot to head and let the gas have time to migrate. you can often get away with much less motion, though, but every now and then you'll need to get gas out of your feet.

you can also do a fairly effective weight check at the end of the dive just by dumping all the gas in your wing. you can rock side-to-side and you should be able to hear the gas bubble in your wing. when you don't hear anything any more you've got all the gas out.

if you can't get the gas out without crashing into the bottom or running a huge bubble in your drysuit then you're too heavy. if you have to get your wing completely empty and you're running your drysuit tight then you want to add a few more pounds for comfort.