GoPro tray/lights, get to neutral buoyancy

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ncitrdude

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Location
TX
# of dives
100 - 199
I use a BigBlue tray and lights (VTL3500s) mounted on flex ball arms as shown in the attached picture.

Any suggestions on how to get the rig to somewhat neutral buoyancy without having to buy a complete new tray/arms? It seems like all of the buoyancy devices are designed for the interchangable fixed arms (i'm sure I'm getting the terminology wrong, but hopefully you understand what i'm getting at).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 

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I just dive mine negative as the GoPro tray, lights, etc are fairly light. However, if you want to get it a little more positive (or totally neutral) there are products such as the one I have linked below which will work without the need to buy new float arms and all of that. There are more types out there than the one in the link, but it should get you the right terminology etc. to do your own search if you want. These just snap on to the existing arms. Good luck!

Beneath-the-Surface Buoyancy Float Package
 
Thanks for the suggestion... clearly i need to be in the foam business!
 
Thanks for the suggestion... clearly i need to be in the foam business!
No kidding, huh? LOL I bet you can find a do-it-yourself video out there somewhere?? That foam has to be available at a hardware store or something. But I'm a sucker for simplicity, so I'll pay it. Haha!
 
No kidding, huh? LOL I bet you can find a do-it-yourself video out there somewhere?? That foam has to be available at a hardware store or something. But I'm a sucker for simplicity, so I'll pay it. Haha!
I once tried using a foam bought at Home Depot and the pressure squashed it. I just use it without any floats slightly negative,
 
You can use thin walled 1" or 1.5" PVC pipe with a cap glued on each end. Then zip tie it underneath the tray. If there's some way to weigh the setup in the water (like a hanging spring scale off a dock) then you can figure out how much air you need to counteract that.
 
I rigged up an underwater scale in my bathtub and weighed just about every single component (tray, butterfly connector, connector arm, light, camera, etc) individually as well as the complete standard rig. Write it all down and then you can just add up the pieces if you later use different configurations.
 
I once tried using a foam bought at Home Depot and the pressure squashed it. I just use it without any floats slightly negative,
That's hilarious! LOL! Yeah, I just dive it negative as well. It's not that bad.
 
I used some foam from Home Depot and had a little better luck. It worked great on a couple of 60' dives and I was showing off it's perfect neutrality, letting the camera float free on a drift dive with just a gentle positioning nudge now and then. Then I went on a 100' dive. It compressed and deformed. It still had a bit positive buoyancy after that but I just bought some Stix floats at Backscatter.
 

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