Weight placement with doubles

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Another option is the position of the wing. Depending on the wing you'll have a couple of options for how "high" to mount it on the tanks. If your feet are going up then maybe moving the wing up higher will move the air bubble forward on your body and bring them back down.

Same goes for the drysuit. If the suit isn't fitting well then you may have excess bagginess where air is accumulating.

What kind of fins are you using?

R..
 
What's even worse is that Al80s balance differently when full than they do when empty. If you weight yourself for perfect balance with full tanks, your butt will be in the air when you've blown them down by 2/3s. I can move enough air around in my dry suit to deal with that, but it is perpetually annoying.
 
Has anyone else encountered the same, and have found ways to overcome this? What I would like to find is a way to add any amount of weight and still be perfectly balanced in doubles. Thanks.

It works the same way for everybody. It makes a difference whether you put the weight on the top bolt or the bottom bolt or somewhere else. With enough experience, you will be able to tolerate these differences better; you learn how to move you arms, your legs and your head in different ways to counteract being head heavy or leg heavy.

When I first started diving doubles, I had my rig set up such that the tanks were very high up on my back. My valves were almost at the same level as my ears. It made for an easy reach of my valves but it also made for very head heavy trim. My fundies instructor made my life 100x easier by showing me that my rig needed to be lower down my back. One way to accomplish this is simply tightening the crotch strap. Sometimes, this is insufficient and an adjustment of the shoulder straps are necessary.

In my case, I moved my rig as far "south" as I could. By this I mean, I can still do a valve drill with my drysuit and heavy UGs on. By moving my rig as far south as I could, I was able to get some flexibility as to where to put weights. Specifically, I am now able to put weights in the middle of the rig instead of hanging all my weights on the bottom bolt.

So the short of it is, do you have your rig adjusted so it is as far south as it needs to be?

Finally, instead of using cave line to tie weights to your bottom bolt, there are a couple of other solutions which I think are better. First, Deep Sea Supply sells weight pouches which can be attached to the bottom bolt of your doubles. This is good for about 5lbs of soft weights. Second is what I have personally done. I cut a v-weight to a size that would fit from the bottom of the bottom band to the bottom of the tanks. On my tanks, this is about 3.5" segment. I took a 4" piece of webbing and screwed it onto the flat side of the weight. I then took the strap and burn a hole in it. I secure the v-weight to the bottom bolt using the webbing. See below:



IMG_4105.JPG


IMG_4108.JPG
 
Last edited:
cave light method is only good for temporary usage like testing weight placement. For long term usage, I highly recommend using tail weight. Basically you cut a piece of v weight at the place you want, then hang it between the plate and the tank at the bottom bolt extending toward the bottom of the tank.

My problem is that I have to travel to do 95% of my diving, so it gets expensive to fly with a piece of lead in my luggage.

I have also considered the Halcyon double tank weight pouch (which allows me to use conventional weights), but the most I can squeeze in each of the pockets is 4lbs. My balance is such that I cannot put any weight at the top pouch, so this isn't feasible for me as well.

Last option is to use a weight belt, but I like to try to cut down as far as possible, the number of steps I need to take to gear up.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2015 at 11:01 AM ----------

Another option is the position of the wing. Depending on the wing you'll have a couple of options for how "high" to mount it on the tanks. If your feet are going up then maybe moving the wing up higher will move the air bubble forward on your body and bring them back down.

Same goes for the drysuit. If the suit isn't fitting well then you may have excess bagginess where air is accumulating.

What kind of fins are you using?

R..

Hmmm...I have not thought about moving the wings, great idea. I'm using SP Jets.

---------- Post added July 14th, 2015 at 11:05 AM ----------

It works the same way for everybody. It makes a difference whether you put the weight on the top bolt or the bottom bolt or somewhere else. With enough experience, you will be able to tolerate these differences better; you learn how to move you arms, your legs and your head in different ways to counteract being head heavy or leg heavy.

When I first started diving doubles, I had my rig set up such that the tanks were very high up on my back. My valves were almost at the same level as my ears. It made for an easy reach of my valves but it also made for very head heavy trim. My fundies instructor made my life 100x easier by showing me that my rig needed to be lower down my back. One way to accomplish this is simply tightening the crotch strap. Sometimes, this is insufficient and an adjustment of the shoulder straps are necessary.

In my case, I moved my rig as far "south" as I could. By this I mean, I can still do a valve drill with my drysuit and heavy UGs on. By moving my rig as far south as I could, I was able to get some flexibility as to where to put weights. Specifically, I am now able to put weights in the middle of the rig instead of hanging all my weights on the bottom bolt.

So the short of it is, do you have your rig adjusted so it is as far south as it needs to be?

Finally, instead of using cave line to tie weights to your bottom bolt, there are a couple of other solutions which I think are better. First, Deep Sea Supply sells weight pouches which can be attached to the bottom bolt of your doubles. This is good for about 5lbs of soft weights. Second is what I have personally done. I cut a v-weight to a size that would fit from the bottom of the bottom band to the bottom of the tanks. On my tanks, this is about 3.5" segment. I took a 4" piece of webbing and screwed it onto the flat side of the weight. I then took the strap and burn a hole in it. I secure the v-weight to the bottom bolt using the webbing. See below:



IMG_4105.JPG


IMG_4108.JPG

Thanks for the idea. But for reasons mentioned above, it's not feasible for me to pack weights as I need to fly to dive.
 
Thanks for the idea. But for reasons mentioned above, it's not feasible for me to pack weights as I need to fly to dive.

The Deep Sea Supply weight pouch weighs like 3 ounces.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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