Buoyancy question how do you maintain a sitting hover?

[Blackcrusader]

Why do you feel the need to go fast on a drift dive?

I go fun diving. I enjoy going fast in a drift dive at times. There is one small island I dive at and you can do really nice fast drift dives at around 30 - 35m depth and you get to see a lot of natural beauty. Why does one feel the need to dive at all? You will get many answers.

I can let my mind go blank and not think about anything just sit there drifting away enjoying the scenery. I can get very relaxed like this you might think I am in a trance almost. Brain activity minimal, heart beat drops to the 50 - 55 beats per minute, breathing rate goes to self induced tactical breathing, I breathe for what I need. I dive for relaxation it's my way of just chillin out. At other times I may just hang above a reef floating and looking around for things to photo or take video of. I like to let the currents take me on my journey. I like to dive with as little movement as possible on some dives.

 

[Blackcrusader]

Now I have tried this position and find it incredibly hard to maintain.

If you can when doing safety stops or even on any point on the dive try and spend time doing some motionless hovering. Sometimes I hover as in this video so I can look at things on a reef. You should be able to be motionless and maintain depth using your lungs. I can do it being horizontal face down or face up, head down vertical, sometimes I hang with my legs and arms hanging down not moving. if you are motionless and start sinking add some air to your BCD, if ascending let some air out. Find that balance where you change depth with breathing from your lungs.

 

[FishWatcher747]

Thank you to all the great contributors to this thread and the great advice you have given.

For $60 or so I think I can add a second tank band high up, with trim pockets and fix this system. Similar price to add ankle weights to neck of tank but I think the trim pockets will give me more flexibility.

I will do this fix and now am researching BPW, as this is where I am eventually headed.

Let me see I need a 12 pound stainless steel backplate, but that will be too heavy to travel with so I also need an aluminum one to travel with. On to the next challenge.

 

[VikingDives]

Yeah I am horizontal when finning. But when I stop I go feet heavy. That's a design flaw. Now I am going to spend $45 for a stainless steel tank band and $28 dollars for 2 trim pockets to correct the design flaw.

What kind of fins are you using? Are they positively or negatively buoyant? That could be a part of your problem as well.

 

[Colliam7]

Well if it is not a design flaw it may be design as Collium7 said to make you feel floaty at the surface and floaty in a head up orientation underwater. There are certainly parallels to other sports. If one is a beginner cross country skier they put you in a wide stable ski. If you progress you wonder why the good skiers are way faster in narrow unstable skis. So you have to ditch your stable skis.

A very good equipment analogy. In many endeavors, we start with 'functional but easy', then move on to 'performance' gear. It is a natural progression if we become interested in the activity.

Possible this BC is like that. I've outgrown it in 69 dives. The majority of all the instructors and DMs I see are in BPWs so that is telling me something (like 100% of Instructors and 75% of DMs)

There is a reason that you see a number of Instructors and dive staff in a BP/W. It is primarily the simplicity of the rig, in addition to buoyancy characteristics. I love mine for those reasons, plus it allows me to take weight off my waist. Pete (The Chairman) mentioned the Zeagle Express Tech. Its is a 'soft' backplate - simple, streamlined. I have one, as well as the very similar Apeks / Aqualung Travel Plate. I like them both, but I prefer a 'hard' metal plate, because of my personal buoyancy charcateristics - I have accumulated a bit of bioprene as I have matured.

At this point I was unsure diving was right for me. I really didn't like the mask removal thing but passed. That week I bought a package from local shop. I told the owner I didn't want the cheapest package, something midrange, as I am not broke like I was when I was younger. He did mention BPW but I was not really committed at that point. . . . . . . I've only dove AL80 and I bought 2 of my own.

Your story is not at all uncommon. We all have to start somewhere, and may not be in a good position as a neophyte to fully appreciate the subtleties of different gear configurations. My first BCD was a Zeagle Ranger. Nice piece of equipment, felt oh-so-good when I tried it on in the shop, a bit pricey, but I felt good about the purchase. Of course, it is padded, and very buoyant, and has a bladder that gives 44 lbs of lift, which is WAY too much for single cylinder diving and makes trim maintenance a bit more challenging (a migratory air bubble when diving because the bladder was so big, but never was even close to being filled). I still have it two decades later, sitting in my closet. My first cylinder was also an AL80. Still have it, and use it as a deco cylinder. I moved to a steel BP within the first 100 dives, and to a HP steel cylinder before that, in part because I also bought a drysuit, and the amount of weight I needed to carry, with a floaty fabric BCD, and an AL cylinder, AND the drysuit was enormous. Now, with a 5mm wetsuit, HP100 cylinder and steel BP, I use maybe 4 lbs of lead.

Nobody had ankle weight around cylinder valve.

I use them with students regularly. I would encourage you to pick up a pair and at least try them out on the valve. They are relatively inexpensive, and might offer some good trim support.

I knew a lifeguard who has been a diver for 40 years and he referred me to the shop I went to. I am not unhappy with the shop.

Good. No reason to be unhappy, based on what you have said. The shop got you started, with safe, functional equipment. Hopefully, the shop will grow with you.

If one is not weight balanced the only time one is balanced is vertical and inverted.

An excellent observation!

Well OW led to AOW led to Rescue last summer. Now I am pretty hooked on this crazy sport.

GREAT TO HEAR! It is addictive. I don't have to go to a warm Caribbean destination with lots of fish to enjoy blowing bubbles (although I really LIKE to go to those destinations ). I can dive local quarries repeatedly and have a blast, in part because I treat every dive, whether I am teaching, or diving for personal pleasure, or checking out equipment, as a training dive. I always work on something - trim, or hand/arm position, or no mask swimming, or compass navigation, etc. - at some point in every dive.

 

[FishWatcher747]

I'm using scubapro seawing nova fins which are positively buoyant. So they are actually helping with my weight distribution.

 

[The Chairman]

Do the trim test. Get near the bottom. Get yourself in a resting mode. Mine is with my heels touching the bottom of my tank. Close your eyes and try not to adjust a thing. Count to 10 to see where you are. If you're still flat try to count to 20, then to 46, a minute, and then two. Struggling with your trim causes you to burn more air. It should be effortless.

 

[johndiver999]

I know some of you veterans of scuba feel like, "We had to make our own gear and it took years to get it dialed in, why should newbies have it easy?"

I had to walk 10 miles to school. Hey, I had to walk barefoot. Oh yeah, I didn't even have a school.

Calm down. I have been modifying gear in other sports for years. But asking for a popular BC to have the ability to be adjusted to be weight balanced out of the box is not unreasonable.

Yeah I am horizontal when finning. But when I stop I go feet heavy. That's a design flaw. Now I am going to spend $45 for a stainless steel tank band and $28 dollars for 2 trim pockets to correct the design flaw.

Possibly, you are failing to comprehend the huge diversity in people and gear. Divers range from negatively buoyant stick figures, to obese spheres of adipose tissue. Similarly, some can dive with a bathing suit and others are wearing huge amount of thick neoprene that compresses at depth causing huge swings in buoyancy and probably affect trim as well. Then we move on to tanks, where we have low volume relatively neutral tanks and others are wearing very large and heavy, high capacity steel tank(s) that have shifts in weight of maybe 8 pounds per tank during a dive.

Then you add in the variability of "normal" ballast locations.. Add all this up and it seems challenging to come up with a flawless design that will be optimized for all of these variables- many of which change drastically during the dive and/or with depth changes.

So your head/chest is too floaty. I don't have that problem in a normal thin wetsuit, but with a double or triple layer of neoprene on my chest and a normal weight belt, there was no way I could fight to stay horizontal with any degree of comfort with an aluminum tank. If your head is floaty, the easiest thing to do, is to tie a 3-4 lb weight (tightly) to the neck of the valve and make sure it can't swing around and nail you. This will make a dramatic difference.

Once you have determined (confirmed I suspect) that this solves almost all your problems, then you can fine tune the solution to meet you preferences. You might decide that an ankle weight of soft shot weight around your valve of 3 lbs works great. You might find that placing a 2-lb weight on the front of each side of you harness just below your shoulders gives you stability and trim. Other ideas are adding some lead to the sides of the tank.

None of these solutions are incompatible with a normal BC and they do not involve buying a bunch of equipment or spending a lot or changing from your current BC

 

[The Chairman]

If you're built like a manatee, you get to dive like one.

 

[FishWatcher747]

During my OW, AOW there was talk of keeping a logbook, PADI in my case, regarding Water temp, what exposure suit was worn, salt or fresh and how much weight was worn. I have done this. I don't recall any discussion of weight distribution for a particular dive. Also no discussion of how to modify weight distribution outside weight belt, integrated weight pockets and trim pockets.

I have been reading scubaboard quite a bit since August and did all the online reading of the OW, AOW and Rescue courses and don't recall any discussion of this. If there are a lot of feet heavy divers out there, seems like a subject that would benefit from more publicity and exposure.

I now have the knowledge to fix this problem. When I started this thread I did not. I wonder how many other divers just go on diving feet heavy and haven't gotten it.