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When diving a 7mil uncompressed neoprene suit, the suit material is part of your insulation, as it compresses you add air to compensate for that compression, just as you would add air to compensate for the compression of any gas based (and arent the all) insulation. If you're smart enough to have gotten one made of GN231N, then it compresses less than does other gas-based insulations. This is nothing more than urban myth.Soggy:Yes, there are some mistakes in there, but the point of that section was "dive a balanced rig." Neoprene drysuits are suboptimal because they require additional weight (compared to a shell suit), thus more effort is required for swimming, and they make it difficult for a rig to be balanced since they compress at depth. My understanding was the military drysuits were either TLS350s or CF200s....CF200 is in the "shell suit" category because it has very little change in buoyancy. By "neoprene" they mean those thick uncompressed 7mm neoprene suits.
On the other hand, the big plus to DIR is standardization. My divers have always dove the way I taught/told them to. Ive always stayed open to changes and innovations, but have never moved rapidly to incorporate them. When you dive a team approach, a marginally non-optimum, but standardized, solution to an issue is in most cases preferable to an everybody do their own thing approach.
The problem with DIR is that when a new idea or suggestion comes up some folks seem to get disoriented and run about like a chicken with its head cut off. Permit me to harken back to our recent discussion of the length of BP/W hoses that got into my suggestion that a ½ by 1 inch piece of neoprene glued in the nose pocket of your mask could help, which was met by cries of derision until I posted Peters note to me that said is was OK and the DIR dives should be thinking divers. Theres not been a word in response here or on DIREXPLORERS since I put his post up. I would have no hesitation at taking a group of thinking DIR divers out to do complex research tasks just as I do divers trained to AAUS standards, but Id have to screen carefully to be damn sure that the unimaginative, auto-authoritarians, were left behind, because IMHO, theyre more dangerous than a PADI/NAUI/SSI/SDI/XYZ two day wonder (who at least knows that he or she dont know poo).