Neutral Bouyancy?????????????

[cold kiwi]

so how long did it take you to get your boouyancy under control
honestly im up to 82 dives and i still havnt got it perfect a couple of my friends have well over a hundred dives and arnt happy with theres......although they have just got dry suits

so how many of us can truley say i am perfect at my bouyancy control.....i cant;-0

 

[PhotoTJ]

most of us think we could do a little better, the rest of us are wrong!

 

[GQMedic]

There's always room for improvement at buoyancy for just about everyone. I'm "okay" at it, but I do notice my shortfalls in technique. I'm working on it with each dive, just like you are. You'll get there to how you want it.

-Dennis

cold kiwi once bubbled...

honestly im up to 82 dives and i still havnt got it perfect a couple of my friends have well over a hundred dives and arnt happy with theres......although they have just got dry suits

so how many of us can truley say i am perfect at my bouyancy control.....i cant;-0

 

[the sharkman]

What, 82 dives and you haven't found it yet?

I am so glad to hear that I am not the only one! In warm water, it only takes me a few dives to get my buoyancy controlled, but in cold water (which I usually dive), I have yet to feel like I have got it "found it". I dive wet suits, so maybe that has something to do with it. Oh well, I guess we will always have room for improvement.
:guitar:

 

[Diver0001]

cold kiwi once bubbled...
so how long did it take you to get your boouyancy under control
honestly im up to 82 dives and i still havnt got it perfect a couple of my friends have well over a hundred dives and arnt happy with theres......although they have just got dry suits

so how many of us can truley say i am perfect at my bouyancy control.....i cant;-0

I don't remember how it was for me at 82 dives. I do recall that I was a real yo-yo in the beginning and I found buoyancy control challenging. These days I'm happy with it but I've been diving for quite a while now.

If you're having trouble you might be overweighted (this turned out to be my problem in the beginning) or badly trimmed. Take the time to work on getting your weight right to start with. Once that's done if you can hang horizontal and motionless then your trim is ok, if you can't then you need to move weights around for better trim. If your weight and trim aren't right it's amazing how many adjustments you need to make. Have you taken a peak performance buoyancy class? Maybe something like that would help too.

R..

 

[The Iceni]

I feel that buoyancy is a sadly neglected subject and one we can only learn from experience, trial and error.

This is particularly the case for dry suit diving since there is a positive feedback mechanism in operation. Even with a semi-dry or wetsuit this also applies, but less so.

For adequate control on a dive to my mind there are two main factors to consider.

Firstly the inevitable instability. The deeper you go the heavier you become due to the compression of every air cell. Equally the shallower you become the more buoyant you become. In each case fine skills are needed to correct for this by use of the controls on the BC and I have have no doubt we all overcorrect until control becomes more automatic, but it is not like riding a bicycle on a flat road it is more like riding a bicylce on a high wire!

Secondly, compensation for the inevitable increase in buoyancy during the dive is needed as the tanks become lighter. A 12 litre Nitrox cylinder looses nearly 3 Kg during the dive. Thus weighting and trimming properly before a dive is essential so that the diver will be neutral at the end. This necessitates messing around with a near empty set and playing with weights until you are trimmed and neutral on, or close to, the surface with no air in your BC. (And what is perfect in the pool will not be anywhere near right in the sea). If you are overweighted you can only compensate for this with variable-buoyancy air, compounding your problems.

With my twinset and stage(s) I needed quite a bit of gas in my BC at the start of every dive in order to be neutral at the end. This had to be vented as necessary during the bottom phase to maintain neutrality.

Most, if not all of us learned the hard way. It is certainly not as easy as some would lead you to believe. IMHO a diver with 100 dry suit dives is still learning!

Keep at it!

 

[mollydog18]

most of us think we could do a little better, the rest of us are wrong!

I 'm going to have to disagree with you here. Since I have so little experience (25 dives) I'm going to go ahead and assume that in my case I could do a lot better.

 

[Vixyswillie]

Dr Paul Thomas once bubbled...
This necessitates messing around with a near empty set and playing with weights until you are trimmed and neutral on, or close to, the surface with no air in your BC.

The newbie (read: hoping for his Level I cert this summer) chimes in again.

When I watched the OW DVD a couple of nights ago, I remember it saying that at the beginning of the dive, the water surface should pass through the midline of the mask when the diver's bc is empty and lungs filled. Upon exhalation, the diver should sink slightly. The book says "An easy check for neutral buoyancy is to stop all movement, inhale fully and see if you float up a little. Then, exhale fully and you should feel yourself sink."

Is this what you're referring to, Dr. Paul?

 

[MikeFerrara]

I think you should be pretty darn good before being issued a card. Buoyancy control is diving. Without it you're just breathing underwater. Check the DAN report to see how often buoyancy conttrol problems are reported in conjunction with injuries. Read through the many incedent reports on this board.

The fact that we in this industry issue cards to people and tell them they'll learn buoyancy control with experience is backwards, dangerous and an absolute joke. I find it hard to believe that the diving public doesn't catch on.

If at the end of your OW class you are not confident in your ability to control attitude and position in the water column, DON'T LET THE CLASS END! It simply isn't possible to learn to manage a problem underwater unless you have already learned buoyancy control. You can not manage a reg free flow, sharing air, a stuck inflator, a flooded or lost mask or any one of a number of other problems without FIRST learning buoyancy control. Only practicing these skills while kneeling in a pool or on a platform is a wast of time and doesn't in any way prepare you for real diving.

Beyond that you must keep skills sharp by using them frequently.

 

[Vixyswillie]

Makes complete sense to me, Mike - and I certainly am not the sort of person that willingly contents himself with mediocrity. If I'm apparently lacking in any aspect of what I'm supposed to know at the conclusion of my OW class, I'll continue learning until I get it right - and practicing regularly to keep it that way.

Thanks for your thoughts.