dry suit hover need instructor help

[String]

No its not. If weighting is correct it makes no difference what so ever what you put the air in. Properly weighted theres no bubble to move, dumping works, inflation works and theres no problem in using suit for buoyancy.

This is quite simply a weighting issue, BC or drysuit or whatever you use, bouyancy is far more difficult and far more likely to yo-yo if too heavy.

 

[Mako Mark]

I find my DS hard to use for bouyancy control, and cant actually understand why anyone would reccommend that you do when you have a perfectly good BCD.

Like Boogie said: Use it to keep you dry, Usde your BCD for bouyancy.

 

[String]

Quite simply is why bother with the BC when the drysuit will do. You HAVE to put air in the drysuit anyway and with squeeze off you should be near enough neutral anyway. It saves messing with 2 sources on ascent and makes control easier. Although i personally use my BC (well most days) for buoyancy now ive spent a long time doing it the other way too and cant see any problem for someone doing it.

Overweighted is overweighted regardless of why someone is using for buoyancy.

 

[LUBOLD8431]

Quite simply is why bother with the BC when the drysuit will do.

Because maybe some of us have found it easier to use the BC for buoyancy and the drysuit for warmth. I have found its better for trim, better to maintain control, and the BC provides more lift than the drysuit anyways (which, depending on what cylinders you are using and what other equipment you have may be necessary, ie- doubles, deco bottles, can light, etc..., could be much more than 5# neg at the start of a dive).

 

[Warren_L]

hi
I am haveing some trouble and need some good advice from some of the instructors on here.I have been taking my aow course here in canada at a cold mountain lake.the dry suit is one of the specialty's ,can do the fin pivot okay .the hover seems to get me .I get netural (or I think I am ) try to control my breathing and 2 things happen .1 runaway got to vent air (gettting real good at that skill).2 keep crashing into bottom .the depth we are doing this is actual depth 18' add 1500' above sea level makeing depth 21.6'.my instrutor is good ,not much advice,he seems to thing breathing not in sinc. so I ask for tips and he says pratice. okay do not have regular buddy ,would love to go do some dives and just swim and hover but most buddy's will not go for that.anyway I hope some other instrutor might have had astudent who was just like me loves the sport owns his gear and finds some skills hard and others very easy.thanks for any help

You've received some excellent advice so far. The only thing I would add is that you may have to wait a bit to feel the effect of adding air to your BC (or wing). It generally takes a second or two for you to notice what sort of change there is in your buoyancy, and if you add air and don't give it enough time before determining you need more, then you add more, you can become overly buoyant quite unintentionally. You may also be overweight, but that is another issue you will have to work on. Even if you are overweight, you still should be able to achieve neutral buoyancy.

 

[s7595]

the advice is good except ,most missed the main point .I am takeing a course (padi aow) and must use only dry suit .I do agree the bc is the way to go

 

[Warren_L]

You may adapt my comments to the use of your drysuit also.

 

[lamont]

Yo-yoing is a common symptom of overweighting.

Buoyancy control is inherantly dynamically unstable, kinda like riding a bike. A bike naturally wants to tip either to the left or the right and you have to compensate by leaning one way or the other. Buoyancy control is similar, only the tendancy is to either have runaway ascents or descents.

Being overweighted makes this problem worse. Take someone who has 5# of lift in their BC at 33 feet and they're going to have 6.2# of lift at 20 feet -- which is 1.2# of lift extra. Take the same person, but hand them 15# extra of lead so that they've got 20# of lift in their BC at 33 feet and they're going to have 24.80# of lift in thier BC at 20 feet which is a difference of 4.80# of bouyancy. In the first place the person can probably compensate for that bouyancy shift by breathing out of the bottom of thier lungs. In the second case that person is probably going to need to be dumping or risk rocketing to the surface.

Another way of looking at this is that your lungs can only be used to compensate for so much of a shift in your buoyancy. The more overweighted you are, and the more air you've got then the narrower the depth range is over which you can use your breathing to compensate for buoyancy shifts in your BC and drysuit. In the example above, the diver with 20# in thier BC has a bouyancy shift of 1.2# after rising to only 29 feet, compared to the diver with 5# in their BC that only sees that shift after rising to 20 feet.

In other words, there's a depth band in the water over which you can hover using just your breathing. At the top of that band you're breathing out of the bottom of your lungs trying to fight to stay down. At the bottom of that band you're breathing out of the top of your lungs trying to fight to stay up. Above and below that band you are out of control. You want to make that band as wide as possible since the center of that bad is where you're in the most control. That band gets narrower as you get higher in the water column and wider as you get deeper in the water column (i.e. bouyancy gets easier the deeper you go). That band *also* gets narrower as you get more overweighted and have to fight more air in your BC/drysuit expanding and contracting. The band gets wider
as you take weight off.

Yet another way of stating this is that you don't want to be dragging along a huge air bubble with you. You want that air bubble to be as small and as manageable as possible. Picture yourself diving with 15# of extra lead and a lift bag and having to manage that airspace and keep yourself neutral throughout the dive -- its the same thing as having another 15# of lead and having to manage a larger air bubble around you (drysuit and BC).

 

[lamont]

You've received some excellent advice so far. The only thing I would add is that you may have to wait a bit to feel the effect of adding air to your BC (or wing). It generally takes a second or two for you to notice what sort of change there is in your buoyancy, and if you add air and don't give it enough time before determining you need more, then you add more, you can become overly buoyant quite unintentionally. You may also be overweight, but that is another issue you will have to work on. Even if you are overweight, you still should be able to achieve neutral buoyancy.

I find that if I'm descending it generally works for me to inhale, inflate until I stop and then exhale. I'll have overshot a little bit by inflating until I stopped, but that gives me a little positive buoyancy when my lungs are fully expanded which is what I want to achieve...

 

[ScubaDadMiami]

If you are saying that your instructor insists on using the drysuit for bouyancy control, it is time to move on to another instructor (and likely agency because, if it is the agency I think it is, that is why your instructor is suggesting to use the drysuit to control bouyancy--stupid!). Keep practicing in a pool until you can take two to three minutes to ascend from a depth of ten feet to the surface in a smoothe, consistent pace.

Yes, the amount of time I said is right. You drift up just a bit, vent, drift up, vent and so on throughout the ascent. Just a small bit of movement is all it takes to require a vent.

How do you have your exhaust valve set? It should be all the way open so that, once you start to drift up, you only need to raise your arm (and possibly tilt a bit heads up--just a bit though) for the gas to vent automatically. Did you instructor tell you to turn it up a few notches? Wrong!

Next:breathing control. When you breathe in, you start to rise (this is why you learn this by doing the fin pivot). Exhale and you start to sink. Right? The trick is to learn to time your breathing (still in a natural way though) so that you start to breath in as you sink and start to exhale as you rise. That way, you have much less swing between how far down and up you will go with each breath. I know this seems impossible now. Just try it; you will get the hang after a while.

Now, you are going to put it all together. Make sure your suit is vented. Get neutral. Time your breaths so that there is little swing up and down. You will need to do more venting as you ascend at the end of your dive but you will still be neutral during the slow ascent that you already did in confined water. Once you can do these exercises in a pool or other shallow confined water, you can start to work in open water and deeper depths.