A bit of help please

[scubamountaingirl]

I have about 15 dives with my fusion. I dive with under armor in the heat and an mk2 in the cold. This problem was noticed by my bf the first dive I did, but we chalked it up to ????

I have a problem one I cant solve and neither can my teacher. I cant get air into my legs....i have been feet down for over a season. first i thought it the fins and changed them out, then we moved my tank up a notch. then when all configs were good to go, i was horizontal in the pool but there was no air in my legs...I thought this odd when i first dove the suit but also chalked it up to my weight belt being too tight. so i took off the weight belt put some weights in my cam band and NOTHING. i can get air in IF i do a somersault, then I am feet up and corking....there is not a middle ground. I stood in the pool, inflated like a balloon and all the air stayed on my top this is with nothing but my b/p and wing/tank. My teacher then had me lie face up, nothing. He had to physically move my suit around and still no air would move. When he put me face down the air did move and I was puffed. We tested it on the concrete, me standing there wet, and I had to pull the fabric out with my hands for the air to pass to my legs....

Whats going on? I am 5'6" big chest but I am not a giant fat person. My suit seems to fit? It is L/XLG as the med/LG was too low in the crotch. There is a lot of bag scrunched at my knees even when while dressing, and I pull it up....I did a test after being wet, and pulled it all up super tight and there was a lot of surplus at my chest area....a lot...Does this suit not fit me correctly? Do I need to put it on differently? Does it need to be customize to take away the excess in my chest area? I dont now why that would affect air going to my legs?

All I know is that when i use my air, under water, like a bc, if i over inflate, instead of it going to my legs, its going out my neck seal and I am getting wet there. I can feel it like an over flow....

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME I HAVE ALREADY LOST A SEASON OF DIVING BECAUSE I DONT KNOW HOW TO USE THIS SUIT. Every one I know that has a fusion, puts it on jumps in the water is is good to go, I am a fine diver wet, but dry its been nothing but hell and I want to give up.

and yes i did take a drysuit class, and have been working with a private teacher of many years of dry diving. he does not wear a fusion but has tried them on and is farmillar with them.

Sorry to those of you who are tired of hearing about my feet down syndrome, I know its boring but i swear I feel like giving up. It should not be this hard.

thanks in advance,
wendy

 

[Underwater Ogre]

This is one for the experts...its usually the other way around, people complaining about too much air in their legs.

Try wearing a pair of thick fleece pants over your current undergarments that should trap some air in the legs.

Good luck,
U/O

 

[Diver0001]

My first thought is that your weight belt is too tight and/or too heavy.

Move more slowly. Loosen the weight belt just a bit. Do a very thorough bouyancy check, pitch forward and be patient.

R..

 

[scubamountaingirl]

R- hard to loosen weight belt under bc straps but i can try. we took the whole weight belt OFF and still no air...what do you mean by pitch forward? i will keep trying . thanks both for the suggestions.

 

[Diver0001]

If you lean your head in a downward position and count to 5 then the "air bubble" in your suit should naturally migrate to your legs.

The point about everything in diving is to do it slowly, including allowing air to migrate within a drysuit.

R..

 

[scubamountaingirl]

ok great feedback. thanks

 

[jridg]

Hrm....the thing I love about the fusion is the lack of air bubble movement.

That said, I usually wear undergarments that keep some amount of air in all areas.

You say your feet are sinking - what kind of fins are you wearing? I know jet fins are heavy.....

It seems to be more of a balance issue than where the air is issue - what would you do in the tropics without a dry suit?

Here's how I dive the fusion:

After I enter the water, I descend - as the suit compresses, I add a little air to the suit to alleviate the compression. I tend to maintain buoyancy with my BC (wing). Again, as I go deeper and feel the suit start to squeeze, I simply add enough air to alleviate the squeeze, then add as needed to the wing. This keeps a very minimal bubble in the suit and allows freedom of movement during the dive.

Not sure if all that helps - I hope so.

 

[Diver0001]

Looking back on this thread there is more to say.

Getting your balance right isn't only a question of how much weight you have but *where* it is.

If you are sure you have the right amount of weight and your feet are still sinking then you should move some of the weight up higher on your body. Most BCD's these days have pockets where you can put the weight. These pockets are a little higher up on your body than your weight belt and if you move some of the weight into the pockets then it will cause you to tip forward a bit more, which brings your hips (and therefore your legs) up higher.

If that's not enough you can move weight up even higher by attaching a block to the cam-band of your BCD. Some BCD's also have weight pockets behind the shoulders which will allow you to migrate some weight up quite high on your body.

All of this is dependent upon having the right amount of weight. It's really paramount before you start adjusting *where* things are, that you do a very thorough buoyancy check first.

The other thing that might help is to hold a slightly different "posture" in the water. If you're holing/arching your back (belly out) either on purpose or because your weightbelt is very heavy and pushing down on your lower back then this will cause your hips (and therefore your legs) to drop lower. Being conscious of your posture may allow you to arch your back a bit less and hold your hips up higher. This is, however a game of diminishing returns because you can't swim around with your back rounded or your head will point down and you won't be able to see where you're going.

Also, if you bend your legs at the knee then any air that you have (or put) in your feet will stay there and allow you to keep that bent-knee posture (ergo, feet up) without tensing your muscles. If you're straightening your legs, for example, becuase you're flutter-kicking, then in your case I would expect the air bubble to have a tendency to move up and your legs will have a tendency to sink.

Finally, if you don't already use a frog-kick with your drysuit then try to learn it. The frog-kick is a natural and comfortable kick starting from the bent knee posture and in terms of drysuit diving is really the optimal kick.

R..

 

[scubamountaingirl]

I am using a b.p and wing so no pockets for weights. but i am using cam bands to hold some weight on my upper tank. and yes i am bending my knees with the frog kick. I think some of this is coming from the fact that i am not getting air into my legs and thus my feet because i am very rarely horizontal. its a catch 22...if i am NOT horizontal, no air will go to my feet *from the mouth of whites....so my weighting is paramount to me maintaining a horizontal pose to hover and get air into my feet and I may find that my hollis fins were NOT too heavy for me, and send back the slipstreams I just ordered....

In the past 24 hrs. with all this good feedback, I am thinking that my suit is not too big on me and air is not getting trapped anywhere, I am just not in the right position to get air to go to my legs. I hope this is a correct conclusion.

Thank you all for your thoughtful and meaningful comments. I will work on my posture also. i did notice that i am tense underwater since all of this has happened. I used to in my wetsuit, be a mermaid, now i feel like a brick...

to be continued and I will let you know if I make any progress this weekend.

ww

ps. R- your signature is geared right at me....

 

[TSandM]

Wendy, do you have any easy access to a pool or some other shallow, quiet water you can play in? It sounds as though some "unusual attitudes" work might do you a world of good. Once you have your total weight correct, and your tank up as high as it can be without pushing your head down, get in the water and play a little bit. Get neutral, in whatever position you're in, and then use your fins to change that position. Do a headstand. You should DEFINITELY feel gas go to your feet when you do that! If you don't, it seems likely you have virtually no gas in the suit (oversqueezed) which will make it impossible to use the gas bubble in the suit to do any posture correction.

Remember that gas goes to the highest point it can reach -- so if you are diving in a feet down position, the gas goes to your shoulders or out your dump valve. The good news is that your fins are powerful enough to move you around in the water and overcome your weight and suit gas imbalance, and you can swim in good trim and get gas into your legs, even if your weighting is quite a ways off correct distribution. What you can't do is hover in a horizontal position, if you are unbalanced. But if you GET into a horizontal position, get some gas into your legs and feet, you may find you can maintain it.

But the biggest key to all of this is to keep it playful. You're stressing out over it, like there is some time line for being perfect. The fact is that buoyancy, trim and all other diving skills are works in progress for virtually everybody, but the good news is that the way you work on them is by going underwater . . . When I started "practicing" after Fundies, my buddy and I would go out and screw up repeatedly. I can remember vividly having lost my buoyancy control at ten feet, while trying to spool up line, and ending up on the surface festooned in nylon spaghetti, laughing hysterically. It's fun; this is all fun, and part of the fun is figuring out how to solve problems like the one you're having.