2nd opinion: diverite Travel EXP wing with AL80 and 7mm?

[lemon]

Hey all,

I've done a lot of reading on this forum and have gone through the ultimate wing lift calculator but am a bit confused and would really appreciate some last minute advice.

I recently purchased a diverite transpac harness with travel exp wing (27 lbs of lift). I will be diving AL80s in a 7mm with hood. I don't carry any other substantial gear other than a relatively neutral camera while diving.

Do you guys think that this is a decent setup? Looking at the calculator it seems I am close to the limit of this wing? Any thoughts?

Many thanks as I realize this topic is a long beaten horse, however, I am new to wing BCs...

 

[alv777]

How do you do your calculation?
7mm will make you more bouyant. So you actually needs less lift.
Then Travel Exp wing should be enough lift.

 

[muddiver]

The travel versions of the Dive Rite wings are for warm water diving with minimum exposure protection. With a 7 mil suit you will probably be carying 20+ lbs in cold water and 14+ lbs in warm water. I would not reccomend using it for any lead weight combonation over about 15 lbs. Go with the rec wing (or it's current version) and be safe.

Also post under the manufacturers section and see if Dive Rite has a reccomendation for your situation.

also without knowing what water temp., water type (salt vs. fresh), lead amount, etc. it is hard to answer your question.

 

[lemon]

it would be salt water and i envision carrying 24-26# of lead.

 

[cool_hardware52]

How do you do your calculation?
7mm will make you more bouyant. So you actually needs less lift.
Then Travel Exp wing should be enough lift.

Ah, well no not really.

More buoyant exposure suits require higher lift BC's

We use a Buoyancy Compensator to compensate for things that loose buoyancy as we descend.

A dive skin that's maybe 2 lbs positive can only loose 2 lbs if you manage to compress it fully.

A 7mm suit OTOH might be 20+ lbs positive at the surface, and it has the potential to loose all of it's initial buoyancy if one descends to a great enough depth.

Tobin

 

[cool_hardware52]

Hey all,

I've done a lot of reading on this forum and have gone through the ultimate wing lift calculator but am a bit confused and would really appreciate some last minute advice.

I recently purchased a diverite transpac harness with travel exp wing (27 lbs of lift). I will be diving AL80s in a 7mm with hood. I don't carry any other substantial gear other than a relatively neutral camera while diving.

Do you guys think that this is a decent setup? Looking at the calculator it seems I am close to the limit of this wing? Any thoughts?

Many thanks as I realize this topic is a long beaten horse, however, I am new to wing BCs...

Few if any 7mm suits will exceed 27 lbs of initial (surface) buoyancy.

Your rig, harness, reg, full al 80 certainly won't exceed 27 lbs.

You have plenty of lift capacity.

Tobin

 

[redacted]

it would be salt water and i envision carrying 24-26# of lead.

How big a diver are you and how deep are you planning on diving? It's really a question of how buoyant that 7mm suit is. I have seen larger 7mm 2-piece suits that were over 30# buoyant. Based on the weight you are using, I suspect yours is well below that. I take all my neoprene to the pool and measure the buoyancy of each piece. If yours is close to 20#, you should be OK. If it is 25+, Then you might be challenging that wing on deeper dives where compression could reduce the effective buoyancy 80% or more. You might also want to put your rig in the pool and measure the effective lift you are getting to make sure there are no surprises there. And you will want to make sure you don't overweight your self. You may well not have a lot of room for error.

 

[Gombessa]

Lemon,

If you're correctly weighted with 26lb of lead, then it seems to me you'd probably be just fine with that wing. Your 7mm suit will provide the majority of your required lift at the surface, and the wing has more than enough lift to help with the rest.

If you go deep enough to compress your suit all the way (I'd imagine that's pretty deep), a fully-inflated wing won't quite provide all the lift you'd need to stay neutral; at the beginning of the dive you'd be negative by the 6lb of air in the tank. But you should be able to swim up 6lb if needed. At recreational depth, it's probably reasonable to assume your suit will retain at least as much buoyancy at depth to counteract to weight of your gas, so 27lb should be sufficient to keep you neutral at depth.

If you have a complete wing failure at depth, it doesn't really matter what the capacity is, you just need to be able to ditch enough weight to swim the rig up until your suit rebounds enough to regain buoyancy. That's probably between 10-12lb ditchable, maybe a little more to make the swim less stressful.

At the end of the dive, you'll be neutral at the safety stop with no gas in the wing, and slightly positive at the surface, so again the wing capacity will just be extra.

From what I've seen, for many of us diving 7mm+ suits in California, 30lb lift is more than sufficient, and 27lb is right about there.

 

[lemon]

I'll be diving to recreational nitrox depths generally, so no deeper than 130. I'll be using a henderson H2 wetsuit, size large. Possibly adding a 5/3 mm hooded vest. I'm 6'1" and 195#. I plan to have 4 pounds of non-ditchable trim and the rest in ditchable integrated pockets. Hope to be able to get off of the surface with 24#.

 

[redacted]

I'll be diving to recreational nitrox depths generally, so no deeper than 130. I'll be using a henderson H2 wetsuit, size large. Possibly adding a 5/3 mm hooded vest. I'm 6'1" and 195#. I plan to have 4 pounds of non-ditchable trim and the rest in ditchable integrated pockets. Hope to be able to get off of the surface with 24#.

My 5mm XXL hooded vest is 6 lb buoyant. That could be the straw with your rig. I'd get to the pool and measure all that stuff and, if it looks close, ease into the more challenging situations so there are no surprises. At least you will understand when you might have to swim a bit harder or drop a few pounds.

BTW, I wear the hooded vest with a 5mm suit that is 13 lb buoyant and use an HP100 that has a 6 lb swing. My 30# older travel wing looses some capacity the way I have it mounted (guessing 3 - 4 LB) but it handles it OK within recreational limits. But early in the dive at 100+ feet, it is carrying a pretty good load of gas to keep me neutral. I'm not sure it would work for me with a buoyant 7mm in place of my 5mm.