Introduction

[Sarah_L]

Greetings,

I am just starting my dive journey. Truly just starting. I take my first ever (SSI) Try Scuba class this Thursday! Woot! I already know I will be doing the Level 1open water certification course but my son is not sure. So, we are doing the Try Scuba class to see if he is interested in continuing on as well.

Diving is something I’ve wanted to do for many years & taking steps to completing the certification is simply thrilling. Thanks for reading. I’m delighted to become apart of this community.

 

[lowviz]

Welcome!

That is how I got into scuba, the kid. The kid moved on and I stayed with it.

Keep posting your experiences...

 

[Compressor]

Welcome to ScubaBoard Sarah_L. Glad you decided to learn diving and happy to have you on this forum.

 

[Tripp]

Welcome to ScubaBoard! Dive on in, the water's fine!

 

[Sarah_L]

Thursday night Try Scuba class was fun & frustrating if I’m honest. It was me, the Instructor & 2 Assistant Instructors & they were great. But when it came time to descend to the bottom of their pool, I had trouble clearing my left ear. It finally cleared but I had trouble with it the whole time. I could get it to clear but paid for it the next day. I was too aggressive with my clearing! Also, I was weighted in such a way that I sunk like a rock to the bottom of the pool. That was on purpose my instructor explained but frustrating for me! My instructor helped me add just a bit of air to the BC after I signaled him but still if I inhaled I shot to the top of the pool, if I exhaled I sunk like a rock. Again, the instructors tried to keep it fun & I am glad I did it. I’m not deterred from becoming open water certified but I need to work on clearing gently & safely. And I look forward to learning about & experiencing neutral buoyancy.

 

[Tripp]

Keep trying! I'm sure you've been told this, but for me, the secret is to equalize OFTEN. That is before you think you need to and every few feet as you descend. Many little equalizations are much easier than fewer big ones. You got this!

 

[Sarah_L]

Keep trying! I'm sure you've been told this, but for me, the secret is to equalize OFTEN. That is before you think you need to and every few feet as you descend. Many little equalizations are much easier than fewer big ones. You got this!

Thank you SO very much for your encouragement. I really appreciate it.

 

[scubadiver888]

I've always had trouble clearing my ears too. The one thing I found was, if I can feel the pressure on my ears I have to go up a few inches to a foot and try clearing. I mean ANY pressure. I'd not wait until it hurt or even irritated me. I'd be equalizing, equalizing, equalizing all the way down. When I'm doing it right, I never feel anything on my ears. I, literally, equalize ever few inches when I'm first descending. Once I get down to 15 feet or more than I can slow down how often I equalize.

Also, if you aren't weighted correctly, it would be hard to control the up and down. This is especially true in the first 10 feet of water. The deeper you go, the less dramatic the pressure change. So being too heavy might have made it harder to control going up and down.

See, if I am perfectly neutral in the water with no air in my BCD then I should be able to go up and down just using my lungs. I've been using my lungs since I was born. I'm really good with them. However, if I have too much weight on, I'll have to add some air to my BCD to compensate. As I go down, the air compresses and I'll have to add more (using the inflator on my BCD). As I go up, the air will expand and I'll have to release some of the air (using the inflator on my BCD). If you are new to scuba, using the inflator will be fairly new and you'll have trouble using it. The more overweighted you are, the more you have to adjust the air in your BCD as you go up and down. I was taught by being overweighted. It was tough but after a while and with some help of other divers, I figured out how to adjust my weight.

When I was getting my AOW I had a different instructor. One of the first things I was taught was how to reduce the amount of weight I was wearing so I was neutral with no air in the BCD. It made a huge difference.

I'm actually amazed at the number of instructors or guides insisting the students are overweighted. Things like controlling your buoyancy affect all kinds of other skills and makes them harder. If they take the time to get you neutral in the water, everything else becomes a lot easier. Hopefully, your instructor had you overweighted for the intro to scuba but once you start the full certification, they'll take the time to work on proper weighting.

Now there is one caveat. At the beginning of a dive you typically have 6.2 pounds of air in you tank. As you breath and exhale, you lose more and more of that air. So at the end of a dive you might be 5 pounds too light. So you do actually start a dive slightly negative and become neutral near the end. But you shouldn't have "sunk like a rock."

 

[Sarah_L]

I've always had trouble clearing my ears too. The one thing I found was, if I can feel the pressure on my ears I have to go up a few inches to a foot and try clearing. I mean ANY pressure. I'd not wait until it hurt or even irritated me. I'd be equalizing, equalizing, equalizing all the way down. When I'm doing it right, I never feel anything on my ears. I, literally, equalize ever few inches when I'm first descending. Once I get down to 15 feet or more than I can slow down how often I equalize.

Also, if you aren't weighted correctly, it would be hard to control the up and down. This is especially true in the first 10 feet of water. The deeper you go, the less dramatic the pressure change. So being too heavy might have made it harder to control going up and down.

See, if I am perfectly neutral in the water with no air in my BCD then I should be able to go up and down just using my lungs. I've been using my lungs since I was born. I'm really good with them. However, if I have too much weight on, I'll have to add some air to my BCD to compensate. As I go down, the air compresses and I'll have to add more (using the inflator on my BCD). As I go up, the air will expand and I'll have to release some of the air (using the inflator on my BCD). If you are new to scuba, using the inflator will be fairly new and you'll have trouble using it. The more overweighted you are, the more you have to adjust the air in your BCD as you go up and down. I was taught by being overweighted. It was tough but after a while and with some help of other divers, I figured out how to adjust my weight.

When I was getting my AOW I had a different instructor. One of the first things I was taught was how to reduce the amount of weight I was wearing so I was neutral with no air in the BCD. It made a huge difference.

I'm actually amazed at the number of instructors or guides insisting the students are overweighted. Things like controlling your buoyancy affect all kinds of other skills and makes them harder. If they take the time to get you neutral in the water, everything else becomes a lot easier. Hopefully, your instructor had you overweighted for the intro to scuba but once you start the full certification, they'll take the time to work on proper weighting.

Now there is one caveat. At the beginning of a dive you typically have 6.2 pounds of air in you tank. As you breath and exhale, you lose more and more of that air. So at the end of a dive you might be 5 pounds too light. So you do actually start a dive slightly negative and become neutral near the end. But you shouldn't have "sunk like a rock."

Hi there,

Well, a lot of time has passed since your reply! I just thought to come back here and update and saw your response. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain. It definitely makes more sense to me now that I'm actually into the OW cert class. I got a chance to work on buoyancy some last night (for the first time) and I got a small taste of how this is a skill that will take me some time to master. Your suggestions and experience above will certainly help as I continue to figure it out. I really appreciate it!

 

[drrich2]

I'm late to the party. As you spend time on the forum, you'll read threads where it's noted historically a lot of scuba classes were taught with overweighted students on their knees in the bottom of a pool for initial skills training, but there's been a move amongst some toward teaching neutral buoyancy from the start, including at this stage. Which instructors posting here have indicated works better than I would've thought.

As ScubaDiver888 explained, you lose a few pounds in compressed air weight over the course of your dive, so at the end of your dive, you're at your lightest. This makes for a good time to see how your weighting is.

If I want to check my weighting, and it's a leisure dive where I'm not pressed for time, keeping up with anybody, distracted, etc..., my personal approach is, at the end of a (roughly 15 foot) safety stop, with close to 500 PSI (give or take) left in my tank, hold my inflator straight up...and let the air out of my BCD.

If I'm weighted correctly, I may sink slowly, but if I sink quickly, I'm over-weighted. And as ScubaDiver888 also explained, when overweighted you keep a larger air bubble in your BCD bladder, which means larger buoyancy swings as you move up and down, which leads to move adding and subtracting air during your dive, which is wasteful and distracting.

Richard.