Got Lift? And other gear questions.

[Dirty-Dog]

Most OW classes require 4 or 5 OW dives. Why did they let you do 4 days of 2 tank reef dives, and not give you a card? Sounds odd to me.

Because the resort course is VERY basic and there is a great deal of material covered in OW that it does not touch. We could certainly have done the extra class time and gotten C-Cards, but we elected to spend our time in the water. It seemed to us to be a better use of our time in Cancun. The classroom stuff can easily be done in land-locked Colorado.

 

[TSandM]

As has already been stated, wing lift is based on how much buoyancy you need to compensate for, and a wing also needs to be able to float your rig on the surface (because there are some places where you take the gear off in the water before reboarding the boat). You can do a pretty good quick and dirty calculation of lift requirements: Given the 5 mil wetsuit, you'll be using a steel plate which is 5 lbs negative. Add a full Al80 (2 pounds) plus your regulator (maybe 2 lbs) and you're about 9 lbs negative. Now, if you carry eight pounds or so of lead for that 5 mil suit (which is what my husband uses) the rig is 13 pounds negative, so any wing lift beyond that will float the rig.

At the end of the dive, you have the 5 lb plate, 2 lbs of reg, 8 lbs of weights, and a tank that's +4, and you should be neutral, so that means you've got no more than 15 pounds of lift from the suit you can lose. Again, anything more than that is enough lift.

As a practical experience story, I have dived my LCD 30 wing (which is far more lift than I really NEED in warm water) for five years with no issues. It is small enough not to have a significant "taco" effect on an Al80. The 17 lb wing I have is more fun -- more streamlined and easier to vent -- but it's also on the borderline for lift with a 5 mil suit, and I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner.

I don't know where Web Monkey dives, but in five years, I've not had to do a rescue of any sort (worse than grabbing a new diver and preventing them from corking) so I don't plan my lift to hold up another diver.

As far as regs go, if budget is an issue, you really don't need to buy SP's top of the line regulator. We bought Aqualung Titans when we got certified, and both of us still use them for single tank diving. They were middle of the road in price, and have proved both very reliable and good to breathe down to 130. I would recommend you buy a brand you can get serviced locally. You might ask why, since you won't be diving locally and you will have tons of time to send things in for service . . . but right after service is the time when things are most likely to go wrong, and it is an EXTREMELY good idea to get your equipment into a pool to check its function before taking off on an expensive dive vacation. And if you find anything not working properly, it's awfully handy to be able to run in panic to the dive shop and say, "It isn't WORKING!"

Take the money you save by not buying the MK25/S600s (which, by the way, are my cave diving regs, and I love them) and buy a dive computer. You will very quickly find that diving tables doesn't work very well. Most dives at resorts are guided, and the guides follow multi-level profiles to maximize dive time, and those profiles will be completely off the charts if you try to plug them into the eRDP.

 

[Web Monkey]

I don't know where Web Monkey dives, but in five years, I've not had to do a rescue of any sort (worse than grabbing a new diver and preventing them from corking) so I don't plan my lift to hold up another diver.

I dive from a cruise ship for a couple of weeks in the winter, and on a dive boat full of random divers in the summer. It's probably not typical usage.

Terry

 

[rstofer]

If I need 30# of lift at depth with a full tank and I assume a similarly equipped buddy, there is no way my 30# wing will get us off the bottom. Swimming a 60# wing with a single tank is out of the question.

We're going to need a 'Plan B'. That might include a SMB (Surface Marker Buoy), a lift bag or even ditching weight. If we each drop 10#, we can probably swim up the difference. As we approach the surface, we'll be counting on the fact that our wetsuits won't rapidly decompress and we will still be several pounds negative at our stop and probably around neutral at the surface. Or maybe we can tie a line around the ditched weights and pull them back up when we get further off the bottom.

'"What if's" are always something to think about!

Richard

 

[akbpilot]

If you are going to buy a mask with script lenses, make sure you dive that same model before you spend the money to put the script lenes in. Sucks to have mask you spent a lot of money on and find it leaks or doesn't fit right.

In addition, you might consider buying a second non-script mask to keep as a spare or replacement for your lenses. Buddy of mine had the skirt on his script mask chewed by a dog, and couldn't find another (model discontinued). I'm not sure all masks can have lenses replaced, but it's worth checking out.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

If I need 30# of lift at depth with a full tank and I assume a similarly equipped buddy, there is no way my 30# wing will get us off the bottom. get further off the bottom.

'"What if's" are always something to think about!

Richard

So under what situation are you going to need 30 pounds at depth?

I would say 30 pounds is plenty and certainly overkill for warm water and aluminum tanks which is the scenario the original poster was asking about. Recall that ditching your weights is an option, although a very unlikey one to be exercised underwater.

 

[Dirty-Dog]

As has already been stated, wing lift is based on how much buoyancy you need to compensate for, and a wing also needs to be able to float your rig on the surface (because there are some places where you take the gear off in the water before reboarding the boat). You can do a pretty good quick and dirty calculation of lift requirements: Given the 5 mil wetsuit, you'll be using a steel plate which is 5 lbs negative. Add a full Al80 (2 pounds) plus your regulator (maybe 2 lbs) and you're about 9 lbs negative. Now, if you carry eight pounds or so of lead for that 5 mil suit (which is what my husband uses) the rig is 13 pounds negative, so any wing lift beyond that will float the rig.

At the end of the dive, you have the 5 lb plate, 2 lbs of reg, 8 lbs of weights, and a tank that's +4, and you should be neutral, so that means you've got no more than 15 pounds of lift from the suit you can lose. Again, anything more than that is enough lift.

As a practical experience story, I have dived my LCD 30 wing (which is far more lift than I really NEED in warm water) for five years with no issues. It is small enough not to have a significant "taco" effect on an Al80. The 17 lb wing I have is more fun -- more streamlined and easier to vent -- but it's also on the borderline for lift with a 5 mil suit, and I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner.

I don't know where Web Monkey dives, but in five years, I've not had to do a rescue of any sort (worse than grabbing a new diver and preventing them from corking) so I don't plan my lift to hold up another diver.

As far as regs go, if budget is an issue, you really don't need to buy SP's top of the line regulator. We bought Aqualung Titans when we got certified, and both of us still use them for single tank diving. They were middle of the road in price, and have proved both very reliable and good to breathe down to 130. I would recommend you buy a brand you can get serviced locally. You might ask why, since you won't be diving locally and you will have tons of time to send things in for service . . . but right after service is the time when things are most likely to go wrong, and it is an EXTREMELY good idea to get your equipment into a pool to check its function before taking off on an expensive dive vacation. And if you find anything not working properly, it's awfully handy to be able to run in panic to the dive shop and say, "It isn't WORKING!"

Take the money you save by not buying the MK25/S600s (which, by the way, are my cave diving regs, and I love them) and buy a dive computer. You will very quickly find that diving tables doesn't work very well. Most dives at resorts are guided, and the guides follow multi-level profiles to maximize dive time, and those profiles will be completely off the charts if you try to plug them into the eRDP.

Thanks very much for the examples. I've been picking the mind of one of the lab techs in our ED. Her husband runs one of the two LDS. But I assume there is at least some bias attached to a profit motive.

The SP gear is recommended and sold by that LDS. I don't mind spending extra for top notch gear. I just don't want to buy it and find out it's all hype and no performance. I'm planning to look up info on the gear people have mentioned here, and I'll add the titans to that list.
The eRDP is capable of multilevel dives, but I do realise it's a poor choice compared to a dive computer. On the other hand, it will suffice on those guided dives while I figure out what computers to buy. I plan to rent different BCD/reg/comp combos while we're in Cancun this year, and those combos will be picked based in part on what I learn here.

Thanks again.

 

[Dirty-Dog]

If you are going to buy a mask with script lenses, make sure you dive that same model before you spend the money to put the script lenes in. Sucks to have mask you spent a lot of money on and find it leaks or doesn't fit right.

Good idea, but I bought the mask before our trip last year. I apparently got lucky, because I ordered it online without knowing how stupid I was being. The fit seems fine.