Shaunzxr

I mainly dive 35m about an hour, I take a 7l ali with 30%.
I weight myself with as little lead as poss the 7L being part of that weight.
I can control my ascent no problem and can hold a stop at 3m no problem.
I control my boyancy with my suite, right or wrong I am happy with that.

I am now building up dives to do mod2/3 and carrying a ali 80cf as well.
I now find out I can't consider the bottles as weight incase I have to ditch them or pass them off. I understand this is correct and obviously I am following the rules.

Its just now I am dropping like a brick. I am filling the suit to stop squeeze and controlling the boyancy with the wing. This is out of my comfort zone and feel I am starting again. Yes I'm coping and maybe a few more dives and I will be ok.

I can't help feeling what if I don't ever ditch or pass off the bottles. I don't think I would ever ditch them and I don't think I would pass them off unless I new I didn't need them.
Why not consider them as weight and go back to using my suit for boyancy

schford

It depend's on your strategy - I wrote an article about weighting some where in the forums I really should put it in the library...any how back to the matter at hand.

Personally I cound my bailouts as being part of my weight but have 2m hoses so if someone needs to breath off them they can.

If my buddy bailouts I will be coming up with them anyway.

Stuart

Shaunzxr

Out of interest how do you control your boyancy

Mikel-Deko

Hi
Do you test your bouyancy with them full or empty?
Mikel

schford

I use a wing to control my bouyancy and use my suit to stop suit squeeze only.

I set my weight with them empty and use 7l steels.

Stuart

decoweenie

Just hope that you will never have to take them off underwater...

Anything could happen:

• Had to take the stages off to get out of a secondary tight hole when the main entrance was silted out (it actually happened recently)
• Stage clips broken off - could happen ;)

viscya

Weighting is me + unit + a lb or two for a quicker decent.

Bailout is separate since it may be handed off, or clipped to a line on the way up. Beside, the swing in buoyancy invalidates it's use as negative weight. If anything you have to carry extra weight to account for the buoyancy of empty bottles.

schford

Would have to tie em on with the 2m hose then ;) or stuff my bockets with crap!

womble

What he said.

__________________
"What could possibly go wrong?? . . "

Mark Chase

I use an ali 80 of 50% which is pretty neutral in the water, and a steel 10ltr which is pretty neutral in the water when filled with 18/45 so my tanks dont really assist on the weighting front anyway.

I can hold a 6m stop with just the unit on and 3m is doable but its uncomfortable to hold for a long time.

Then i add bailout, reels, back up lights and all the other paraphernalia i might have to ditch and i sink just fine. I sink really quickly with two 7s for bailout but as i say the 10 and the 80 dont add much at all, Maybe 1k each for the first stage?


ATB

Mark Chase

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See my "Doing It Chasey" video where I'm locked into a padded room, naked, with two ball bearings and within an Hour, I manage to lose one and break the other!!!

Kevin Juergensen 16/11/08
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