Adjusting Weights

[scubafool]

You're not doing anything wrong, other than holding your breath for too long.

Exactly. Try breathing out slowly as soon as you start to float up off of the bottom. Play with it, with practice you will be able to move up or down at will with just breathing control.

 

[riffdiver]

You're not doing anything wrong, other than holding your breath for too long.

So, I should breathe shallow? I was told the pattern should be slow in, pause, long breathe-out. By time I breathe-in, I'm going up, fast. Breathe-out results in fast breathing. I could feel it. Al my instractor told me, to take half breaths. Is that a solution? At that point I start to breathe rapidly.

I feal like in no win situation. There must be a solution, and it should be more then one. Any one knows about any articles?

Many thanks.

 

[jeraldjcook]

In normal breathing [calm, relaxed breathing], you probably only use a quarter of your lung volume. The trick it to use the right volume of lung capacity. To keep neutral in one situation it might be 25-50% [breathe out to 25%, in to 50%] to maintain nuetral buoyancy. In another situation you might use 50-75%. Huge breathes in and huge breathes out do indeed make it hard to control buoyancy. In, pause, out, pause works if the timing and volume of air is right for the situation. Anybody else breathe like this?

 

[Amadeus023]

Hello riffdiver - there has been some useful info shared in earlier posts on this thread. I also forwarded you a PM that was sent to me by Web Monkey that is very useful as well. Hope this helps! I just love the people here are SB - they are so willing to help out the newbies like us! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread.

 

[riffdiver]

I Thank everyone for your help. I will try to get this Buyoncy under control or there is no sence going into the water. Without proper Buyoncy control technic nothing will work. I just need to understand the concept. I have read posts on "How to get nutreal" at the surface, but it's not that easy to put to practice, aparently. You start to understand the difference between instructors, then again, how would you know before.

Thanks again everyone.

 

[Charlie99]

So, I should breathe shallow? I was told the pattern should be slow in, pause, long breathe-out. By time I breathe-in, I'm going up, fast. Breathe-out results in fast breathing. I could feel it. Al my instractor told me, to take half breaths. Is that a solution? At that point I start to breathe rapidly.

It's difficult to scuba dive in 4' of water unless you are weighted properly and are used to controlling your depth with your lungs. Even then, if you are wearing much neoprene, or have much air in your BCD, you won't be able to do the normal slow. deep breathing without going more than 2' up or 2' down.

At a normal 10-20' stop you could breathe deeper, larger, slower breaths that, at only 2' of water will have you either bouncing off the 4' bottom or hitting the surface 2' above you.

It's something you will just have to play with. My suggestion is that you get weighted so that you don't have much air in your BCD, then find what level of inhale keeps you more or less stable at 2'. Then you can play around a bit seeing how your breathing affects your up/down movement. Just for the purpose of trying to control your buoyancy, I'd even remove the weight needed to compensate for the 6 pounds of air in your tank, and just add back another pound or two every so often as you consume the air.

Don't sweat the 4' pool too much at this point.

 

[riffdiver]

It's difficult to scuba dive in 4' of water unless you are weighted properly and are used to controlling your depth with your lungs. Even then, if you are wearing much neoprene, or have much air in your BCD, you won't be able to do the normal slow. deep breathing without going more than 2' up or 2' down.

At a normal 10-20' stop you could breathe deeper, larger, slower breaths that, at only 2' of water will have you either bouncing off the 4' bottom or hitting the surface 2' above you.


Don't sweat the 4' pool too much at this point.

Thank you, Charlie99.

I thought of that, and I moved to a dipper end of the pool. 12 feet deep. I have tried to get nutral about 4 feet of the bottom. No good. Same result, breathe-in and shut right up. At this time, I had minimal configuration: No air in BC, 1000psi in steel tank, No suit, no weights.

Mistery.

 

[Charlie99]

With another 8' of water above you, that should have given you plenty of time to exhale enough to stop your ascent. You might be a bit on the light side.

For your next shot at it, try something along the line of

1. go lie flat on the bottom at 12'.
2. add enough air into BCD that you just start to lift off the bottom with full lungs.
3. add just a tiny touch more air to the BCD and you should be lifting up off the bottom a ways, and then settling back down as you exhale.
4. keep adding just tiny bits of air to BCD until you are bobbing up and down near the bottom of the pool, but not touching it.

Hopefully, some one-on-one time with your instructor can get you into control.

 

[riffdiver]

Thank you Charlie99. Now I'm Getting somewhere. This is a first "Try this procedure" that sounds like an action. I'm sure there are many more like that that you, people with knowledge and experience, could recoment to some newbee. I think I've come to the right place.

 

[spectrum]

Remember too that buoyancy changes do not result in an instantaneous reversal of movement and it's not a sudden reversal. If you can exhale just before you begin to rise you can negate the lift that you had. Likewise if you inhale just as you are about to begin to sink you can pretty much stay put. It's all about timing, rate of breath and how empty or full you keep your lungs.

Obviously you want to reserve modified volume for strategic times in your dive. Timing and rate can let you navigate within a significant depth range without changing the contents of your BC bladder.

For any of this to make sense you must have your weight in the ballpark and certainly not be underweighted. You also need reasonable trim so that you are not flapping your ams. If you have limbs flailing around that will negate anyprogress you are making.

When you can begin to hang like a skydiver under a deployed parachute you are on your way.

Pete