BC's with "Elevator" Lever

[RJP]

No need for them silly looking fins that way!!

No fins = less silt stirred up! And the money that is saved by not buying fins can be used to get a DAN Master Insurance policy!

 

[Coelacanth]

But of course the only alternative to a dive and kick down - must be a rapid feet first decent, ending with a crash into the bottom. Thats how I dive - dump and sink as fast as I can until I smack into the bottom. Then I crawl all over the reef until I'm just about out of air. I hit my elevator button and ascend as fast as I can go.

XtReMe! Although its actually an elevator up-and-down controlamajig

I was taught the feet-first way, and it was incredibly awkward because I didn't even have enough weight on me and was literally pulling myself down the line... "porpoise style" would have seemed a lot easier.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Presumably you have a full tank when you have to do this dip and dive maneuver. So what happens at 15ft when you do your safety stop and you are 5-6 lbs lighter?

If you can't decend by letting air out of your BC then you are either positive or neutral at best so at the end with a AL80 you are 5-6lbs positive - once you hit 15ft you are probably on a one way ticket to the surface.

You need to be as negative at the start of your dive equal to the weight of the air you plan on using.

I love this.

Where we dive we use heavy wetsuits thick enough to handle 46 to 53 degree water. This usually means at least a 7 mil suit. If you are weighted correctly, taking into account the recompression lag of the suit and cold water thermal shrinking of the gas pockets in the neoprene at the end of the dive you should be able to hold a stop at 15 feet with all the gas dumped out of your BC. This is the exact weighting that we Northern California divers strive for. Mike Guererro dives in Monterey so this was aimed more at someone in his situation and pertinent to someone diving in our conditions. If you are diving in warm water then obviously you will not be able to be as buoyant on the surface as we can get away with using the thicker suits.

At the start of the dive with a full steel 100 I am positively buoyant at the surface with my wing completely empty. I do a half bend head first and get traction with my fins and by 10 -12 feet or so I break neutral. The reason I am nuetral at the end of the dive with 6-7 pounds of air missing is because I have taken into account the cold water deflating the gas pockets in the suit plus the fact that the suit has been compressed at depth and doesn't rebound back right away which all combined makes the suit less buoyant at 15 feet at the end of the dive then would it be at the beginning of the dive at the same 15 feet. This is why we check buoyancy (in our conditions with a wetsuit) at the very end of a dive at the last stop.

For a place like Florida where you are using minimal thickness suits I don't know what you guys do or how you're weight is set up and frankly don't really care because I dive in Northern California where the water is freezing cold. I'm sure in warm water places you wouldn't have to kick your way down like I have to here at the start of the dive to overcome the buoyancy of the suit but any body that weights themselves in any conditions to sink like a rock is putting themselves at risk. This would be true for any BC users including overweighted BP/W divers in any temperature water.

This was meant to help out Mike, but if he already has his weighting the way he likes it then he can disregard. He is free to disregard anything if he want's anyway, I don't really care, just a friendly suggestion that's all mean't to help him out.

BTW, once you get your buoyancy dialed in perfectly, mastering nuetrality at any depth becomes very easy.

Eric

 

[Nemrod]

The holding hands thing is sweet. You always know where your buddies are that way!

I thought it was too, I think it is a family, husband, wife, child. I think USD was promoting scuba diving as a family sport. In any event, they are swimming down, have no BC and seem to be having fun. I love looking at old Voit, USD and Nemrod catalogs .

It was common practice to weight oneself such that even at the beginning of the dive you were very slightly bouyant/neutral at the surface. In this way it was needed that you SWIM down the first 15 or so feet at which point suit compression resulted in a slightly negative diver. Yes, at the end of the dive you would be slightly positive to facilitate surfacing and remaining on the surface with NO BC. Since we are talking about a no Deco dive and recalling that safety stops are a relatively new practice and that the recommended ascent rate was 60 FPM then you can see how it was done and in fact is still done by a few.

N

 

[Nemrod]

But of course the only alternative to a dive and kick down - must be a rapid feet first decent, ending with a crash into the bottom. Thats how I dive - dump and sink as fast as I can until I smack into the bottom. Then I crawl all over the reef until I'm just about out of air. I hit my elevator button and ascend as fast as I can go.

That is an interesting method, how is that working out for you .

N

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

But of course the only alternative to a dive and kick down - must be a rapid feet first decent, ending with a crash into the bottom. Thats how I dive - dump and sink as fast as I can until I smack into the bottom. Then I crawl all over the reef until I'm just about out of air. I hit my elevator button and ascend as fast as I can go.

You owe me a keyboard.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Who said anything about "feet first uncontrolled descent"?

I'm just saying that you should be able to descend at the beginning of your dive without having to "swim down like a porpoise."

The poster I was responding to was saying that the proper way to dive is to weight yourself so that you are still positive when you dump all your air at the start of your dive.

I guess you could exhale all your breath out and do one of those flappy arm methods if you are hell bent on doing a feet first descent but I find it easier to just go down head first in the direction of travel. I was taught to line my body straight with the way I was travelling, this way you maintain the smallest profile and create the smallest amount of drag. So let's say I'm going down at a 45 degree angle following an anchor line then my body is lined up in the same direction I'm going and that means a head first descent if I'm parallel with the line, right?
Whatever your method the point I'm trying to make is that a diver should never be overweighted. Bottom line, a diver should be able to hold a stop at 10 to 15 feet with an empty BC. Why would you need more weight than that? to do what with? get more exercise on the hike back up the hill? If you want that then carry a rock up with you.
With that end criteria in mind, whatever your buoyancy at the beginning of the dive is what it is, depending on where you dive and what you have on, but I doubt it would ever mean that you would be weighted to sink like a rock

This is as critical to me as never hold your breath underwater while scuba diving, and don't hold the elevator button down and do the missle to see how much air you can get when breaking the surface.

Eric

 

[crosing]

I always like to be horizontal in the water column during descent.

 

[Nemrod]

I always like to be horizontal in the water column during descent.

Ah, the belly flop method .

You know, it just seems that most scubaboarders are out of touch with the larger scuba community because every magazine is full up with up and down levers and push button automatic transmissions and multicolored split fins that flip up and turn into hiking boots. Rare is the day I see a plate or a wing or a Hog harness or any of that in a magazine, store or even on a dive trip--I am usually the only one. Maybe we are out of touch. I wonder if I can put a power up and down lever on a OxyCheq Mach V? Hmmmm.

How are new divers or divers like the OP to know there is another choice and that power up and down levers are not well thought of or even well thought out since every LDS is h---bound to force them onto every new diver. Who is the dive industry serving with these overpriced fru-fru bags of air? How do they sell so many and why do divers buy them?--if they are so bad?

N

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Ah, the belly flop method .

You know, it just seems that most scubaboarders are out of touch with the larger scuba community because every magazine is full up with up and down levers and push button automatic transmissions and multicolored split fins that flip up and turn into hiking boots. Rare is the day I see a plate or a wing or a Hog harness or any of that in a magazine, store or even on a dive trip--I am usually the only one. Maybe we are out of touch. I wonder if I can put a power up and down lever on a OxyCheq Mach V? Hmmmm.

How are new divers or divers like the OP to know there is another choice and that power up and down levers are not well thought of or even well thought out since every LDS is h---bound to force them onto every new diver. Who is the dive industry serving with these overpriced fru-fru bags of air? How do they sell so many and why do divers buy them?--if they are so bad?

N

It's called the marketing machine.
The intructors and DM's are made to wear and promote what the dive shop carries and the LDS happens to carry what the manufacturer promotes and has lined up to go into the shops. I don't go into many dive shops these days because they all look the same, filled with crap I don't use. Once in a great while I'll hear of a really cool shop that has some cool stuff and had the nerve to go into a different direction, but those shops are rare.
I know about this, I tried to break into this marketing machine and it was impossible.

You want a chuckle, go down to the Breakwater any given weekend in the summer and sit and watch for a while at all the divers. 98% of them are open water divers doing their skills, bless their hearts, their getting certified and I think it's fantastic. But watch the intructors and how they protect their pupils from the evils of anything that's not dive shop PC. I remember doing demos at the breakwater and I'd get some new divers asking about the plate. Right away either the instructor or DM would race over and wisk them away. I would then ask the instructor if they'd like to give the rig a test drive, you know, just for the hell of it, maybe after they finish up with the class. They said they couldn't because it's not what the dive shop carried and they would get in trouble, and if I would please not talk to their students because they already had enough to think about. Jeez, sorry, but they walked up to me, how was I supposed to know who they are.
If you look at how they teach people to fin up and get in the water is a riot also.

And then there's all the new rental gear they have them wear. All the students are decked out in the latest fluff with gadgets and levers and bells and whistles. It must be what the manufactures made a great deal to the dive shop eh? Combine that with a set of blinders and this is what you get.
But it's not the students fault, this is the sad part.