tips for diving drysuit

I will be trying out diving with a drysuit this weekend, was hoping to get some tips, its a bare D6 neo (not new), will be trying out in relativly shallow quarry water, about 30' but will be trying it out in 12 to 15' and if I catch on will go deeper, and im guessing the water temp is around the 55 to 60 degree mark. This will be my first time and have not taken the dry course.

Any hints, techniques, will be much appreciated, what i should do, should not do?

Thanks

Get as much air out of the suit as you can before you get in the water. My first suit was neoprene and I never took a class, I open the exhaust valve all the way so it vents pretty much on it's own as I ascend. At that shallow depth you shouldn't have to put a lot of air in the suit anyway. Here is a link that might help you.http://www.diverite.com/downloads/diverite_34.pdf It's not the same suit but the are some tips in there.

As you've indicated, play around at very shallow depths at first until you can get a sense of "balancing the bubble" . . . that is, getting a feel on how the air migrates within your suit as you go from a heads up position to a heads down position and so forth.

Keep the minimum amount of air in your suit to keep the squeeze off.

Use your B/C for buoyancy, not your suit.

Keep a mental note of your trim issues.

Make sure your dump valve is set properly . . . MAKING SURE that you know in which direction you need to turn it in order to vent or inflate the suit.

Do things slowly, with forethought and planning.

HAVE A BUDDY HANDY!!!

the K

Remember that the bubble will grow as you ascend and that the suit will not vent as fast as a dump valve on a BC. As mentioned, make no sudden decreases in depth.

Pete

divingTim:

Any hints, techniques, will be much appreciated, what i should do, should not do?

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Take a drysuit course.

There should be instructors that will go with you that are there to support the event. Kinda makes sense, because there's tons of people that want to try out a drysuit for the first time without taking a course.

That's how I learned to dive a drysuit. After all these cave dives and what not I should probably go back and take that drysuit course though. I'm bound to kill myself without a drysuit course. A drysuit course is your only saving grace.

RJP:

Take a drysuit course.

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I agree....there are emergency techniques that you need to learn and pratice in the event that there is too much air in your suit or a stuck inflator.

Drysuits can have a pretty serious failure mode in that a stuck inflator improperly handled can lead to a trip to the surface
Get training from an instructor or a good mentor that will teach you and stress you a bit
Take a look here for my post on my good class and some things that you might need to know... http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/260824-dry-suit-class.html


Folks .. please remember that this is in Basic Scuba Discussions

micklock:

I open the exhaust valve all the way so it vents pretty much on it's own as I ascend.

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I picked up a D6 over the winter and had the same idea. I opened the valve completely and when I got out I had a wet ring on my upper arm. I was told that the lack of any sort of pressure on the valve by having it completely open was probably causing it to not seal as well. I've used it a few notches above open and haven't had any problems. I just thought I'd chime in and offer this suggestion seeing as I had an issue with the same drysuit.

RJP:

Take a drysuit course.

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Or find a mentor. Or read all you can and practice in a controlled environment with a buddy.

Drysuit diving is one of those diving things that some people like to give the impression is so difficult/dangerous that you need to pay someone for instruction (like night diving, boat diving and other weird certs you can buy). Nothing wrong with instruction on a dry suit, but diving one is really not that difficult, and MANY of us learned to do so without the class.

Donning, doffing, venting, squeeze, feet-first recovery, maintance... all are easily mastered relatively quickly. And one of the problems is that most instructors will only teach you to use the dry suit for buoyancy - a technique that most experienced divers (who are not paid for instruction) don't do.

So sure, nothing wrong with a class. But for something as simple as a dry suit, I don't think it's that big of a deal either way. That's my opinion, but then I have no income at stake over it.

After reading everything I could find here on ScubaBoard, I took my DS out to a shallow clear place I knew well and spent an hour doing feet first flip-over recoveries, descents and ascents, buoyancy control and inflator valve disconnects. After that, I just went diving. It took me a half dozen dives to really get comfortable in diving the suit, but I've never had to use that feet-first flip-over stunt in real life. It's because I put the minimum gas in the suit to remove the squeeze and then use my BC for buoyancy. I've seen people come out of the class over-weighted and using so much gas in the suit that that have major dynamic instability (with all that gas shifting around) and it takes them forever to get comfortable using the suit. Also, with all the extra gas in the suit at depth, they are frantically dumping like crazy on ascent to try to avoid having an uncontrolled ascent. Their feet are over-inflated, and so the dive shop sells then ankle weights!