TheYellowSubmarine
Contributor
Hi all.
I'm posting this in the Tech forum, because generally they have more experience diving, and in my experience they know better what they're talking about (in general). I'll finally be joining the tech world next week after my adv. nitrox and deco procedures too.
I'm interested to see the proportions of tech divers using the different systems (the first two are a bit similar, since a weightbelt under the harness can't be ditched as fast as the others)
With a 7mm semidry wetsuit and my bp/w, I only use four 1kg (2.2pounds) lead blocks (I can probably half that, I still feel a tiny bit heavy, but haven't really had the chance to do a proper buoyancy test for a while). I used to use a weightbelt under my rig, then got some slotted weights and put them on my waistband, now I've just moved 2 of them onto a tank band (more for trim, but also didn't like having 4 weights on my waistband). Ditching 4kg's isn't going to make a hell of a difference anyway I think (?)
This is for the ocean (not much cave diving around here).
Underwater I don't really see the need for ditchable weights. The only senario I can think of is about to lose consciousness, dropping your weights and going to the surface. Since I am going to be neutral anyway underwater, the time I would take to drop my weights to gain buoyancy would probably do just as much good as hitting the power inflator (I don't have much weight to drop remember). If it was an out of air situation, I'd only have to swim up a little to become positively buoyant also.
So only if my wing bladder(well both since its an Eclipse) failed and I ran out of air at the same time without enough breath to either swim to the surface or get out of my rig(then I'd be rather bouyant in my wetsuit) can I see that I'd be in trouble. So I'd have to be diving deep on a single tank basically with catastrophic failure of air source and wing. I would never do a dive like that anyway.
Ditching weights on the surface is obviously nice in an emergency situation, but I wouldn't say critical.
Seems ok for me to make my weights non-ditchable, what are your thoughts?
Am I missing something?
I'm posting this in the Tech forum, because generally they have more experience diving, and in my experience they know better what they're talking about (in general). I'll finally be joining the tech world next week after my adv. nitrox and deco procedures too.
I'm interested to see the proportions of tech divers using the different systems (the first two are a bit similar, since a weightbelt under the harness can't be ditched as fast as the others)
With a 7mm semidry wetsuit and my bp/w, I only use four 1kg (2.2pounds) lead blocks (I can probably half that, I still feel a tiny bit heavy, but haven't really had the chance to do a proper buoyancy test for a while). I used to use a weightbelt under my rig, then got some slotted weights and put them on my waistband, now I've just moved 2 of them onto a tank band (more for trim, but also didn't like having 4 weights on my waistband). Ditching 4kg's isn't going to make a hell of a difference anyway I think (?)
This is for the ocean (not much cave diving around here).
Underwater I don't really see the need for ditchable weights. The only senario I can think of is about to lose consciousness, dropping your weights and going to the surface. Since I am going to be neutral anyway underwater, the time I would take to drop my weights to gain buoyancy would probably do just as much good as hitting the power inflator (I don't have much weight to drop remember). If it was an out of air situation, I'd only have to swim up a little to become positively buoyant also.
So only if my wing bladder(well both since its an Eclipse) failed and I ran out of air at the same time without enough breath to either swim to the surface or get out of my rig(then I'd be rather bouyant in my wetsuit) can I see that I'd be in trouble. So I'd have to be diving deep on a single tank basically with catastrophic failure of air source and wing. I would never do a dive like that anyway.
Ditching weights on the surface is obviously nice in an emergency situation, but I wouldn't say critical.
Seems ok for me to make my weights non-ditchable, what are your thoughts?
Am I missing something?
