boring and stupid questions about diving in the UK

[dmaziuk]

I've done somewhere in the region of 600+ dives in a bp/w. Never once have I been tipped face first with it completely inflated. if it does, you are not weighted correctly

I am not weighted correctly. I am weighted for horizontal trim underwater, I am not weighted to float face-up with a fully inflated wing topside. (I'm assuming you do that by wearing concrete booties and a drysuit with air bubble around your chesticles.)

 

[rivers]

I am not weighted correctly. I am weighted for horizontal trim underwater, I am not weighted to float face-up with a fully inflated wing topside. (I'm assuming you do that by wearing concrete booties and a drysuit with air bubble around your chesticles.)

Or just a normal amount of air in my wing, and minimal air in my drysuit. I don't float face up (unless I purposely lean back for a leisurely surface swim), but I don't fall flat on my face. No issues with my trim underwater either.

 

[dmaziuk]

Or just a normal amount of air in my wing, and minimal air in my drysuit. I don't float face up (unless I purposely lean back for a leisurely surface swim), but I don't fall flat on my face.

Yes, and if my aunt had been a man, she'd of been my uncle. I specifically said: if you put the aircell behind your back and inflate it fully, the moment arm between your centre of lift and your centre of mass will try to turn you face-down. I did not say you have to let it, or that you need to fully inflate your aircell. Regardless, I'm almost sure YOUR GONNA DIE!!! Eventually.

 

[Neilwood]

Position of weights does play a part in this- if the weight is placed on the side of a weight belt or at the rear then there is less chance of being tipped forward.

Having said that, my bp&w has never tipped me forward

 

[tbone1004]

hi, so a few people on here have recommend that i join a local club and dive here in the UK but i have some questions and reservations and haven't found any answers on the search bar or on youtube. some are based on conditions, some on training and some on equipment. id rather cover it in one post than spam the forum with multiple questions.

1. Are drysuits easy to use? Youtube shows me lots of videos on how to put one on or take it off but not so much on how to use it or how it works ( yes i know that it keeps you dry) i.e valves and hoses and stuff.

2. how important is fitting - if i take the plunge and do a few dives in the UK and enjoy it then i would look to get my own drysuit as renting will work out more expensive in the long run (equipment hire at the local lake is £50 for everything plus £10 entry. with my own equipment i can cut that down to £10 entry and £9 for air + tank. problem is i am a bit of a yo-yo-er in the weight department so i gain and lose the same 14-18 pounds regularly. so if i got a suit and i lost or gained weight would it make much difference? presumably the seals will be tight on the wrists and neck no matter what so as long as the suit fits it should work? - but if i lose weight and its baggy does that cause a problem with too much air in the suit?

C. The cold - Ok so the water is cold, that puts me off, a dry suit solves most of that problem but you are still partially exposed - hands, head, face. now you can get a thick hood and gloves but i guess these are not airtight as with a hood that would make equalizing a problem? does the gloves and hood make you warm or just make it a bit more bearable? and your face is partially exposed so again how bad is it? do you forget about it once you are down there or is it something you have to grin and bear?

4. do you need a lot of extra weight for a drysuit dive. i need 10kg with a thin wetsuit ( i am big but even when i did my OW and was 5 stone lighter i was stupidly buoyant, always have been (did a try dive as a scrawny 10 year old and they had to load me with led to keep me down) i am worried that if i do use a drysuit i am going to need tons of weight to keep me down and that gets exhausting lugging it around before you get in the water and getting out of it if you have to board a boat. 10kg i can carry with ease (i am fairly fit) but if i have to double it its going to be an issue either to carry or for me to buy the poor captain a new ladder for his boat after it breaks off and becomes a new dive attraction

5. Trim pockets - I am looking to buy a Cressi Aquaride (anyone used it or have any thoughts on it?) and it has trim pockets at the back are they worth using? my trim is pretty good and i stay horizontal with ease but i currently need 10kg with 5mm long wetsuit and go for 4kg on each integrated weight pocket and 1kg in each of my bcd side pockets. would it make a massive difference to move the 2 kg to the trim pockets to free up my main pockets?

6. Aqualung core regs - i was recommended to get these and it says they are ok for cold water, does anyone have them or used them in cold water? any problems with free flowing?

7. scapa flow - So like most people on here in the UK i want to dive Scapa flow now as you may have guessed from the questions above i am really apprehensive about diving in the UK. but if i do and i do a deep dive qualification is it possible to do scapa flow on air? the battleships are around 42m so according to the dive tables i have a maximum no deco of 10 minutes at that depth. My Zoop being conservative probably won't give me that but a battleship is huge!! you can't get around it in 10 minutes or probably even 40 minutes i imagine but what do you do? do you start of at 40m and then ascend every few minutes as you go around to keep in no deco or do you need to learn how to use nitrox to get the full benefit?

1. yes, very easy to use, however having someone work with you in shallow water is helpful. Shallow being 5m or so. Just in case

2. immensely important. Thankfully some of the best drysuits are built very close to you and are quite expensive. Contact O'three and go from there. I have a custom cut trilam suit that is great for the warm water cave diving but if I was cold water diving and didn't have to fly, I would go with neoprene from O'Three. Some of my cold water buddies in the UK beg to differ and dive Otter suits which are also quite good

3. it's not bad, your face goes numb fairly quickly, the hood sucks initially until it warms up but that only takes a minute or so. You can get dry gloves on your drysuit that keep your hands dry, but without active heating they'll get cold over time.

4. it depends on how thick your undergarments are and how much air you put in your suit. Likely quite a bit more.

5. I would highly recommend against gettin gthat if you are using a drysuit. You really should be in a stainless steel backplate and wing. It does many things for you, all that you can find online. If you're going to bite the bullet, Deep Sea Supply has metal weight plates that you can purchase that are removeable but make the backplate itself quite a bit heavier. They are very popular in the northern parts of the US for drysuit diving in single tanks. He does ship to the UK regularly and posts on this forum as @cool_hardware52

6. support local business, buy Apeks. They're going to be better in cold water anyway, but they're also made just north of Manchester in Blackburn. Always good to support local economies.

7. It's on my bucket list as well, but at 42m nitrox isn't going to do you any good due to toxicity and the zoop probably isn't going to be the right computer for that job. You do start deep and come up progressively, but it depends on what your training is and how the dive op wants the dives to be conducted

 

[Storker]

if you put the aircell behind your back and inflate it fully, the moment arm between your centre of lift and your centre of mass will try to turn you face-down.

I guess my wing isn't trying very hard, then...

 

[KenGordon]

thanks for the replies,

it is the aqualung core i am looking at - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aqualung-S...&qid=1489424074&sr=8-1&keywords=aqualung+core

i don't really know much about wings and plates other than the "they make you fall face first" thing is a myth that seems to infuriate a lot of people on this forum. i am trying to get kit i can use at home and abroad rather than shell out for 2 sets of stuff. my current trick to avoid paying the £70 scuba equipment fee with easyjet or the £4 per kilo excess suitcase charge is to put my dive stuff in my suitcase and then cram my clothes into my backpack as hand luggage. you said a BPW would be about 2.5kg would that be a major difference to the weight of a bcd in my suitcase? also how does a wing work? where would i attach my torch and

so if i get a dry suit in my mid to lower weight flux i should be ok to have a bit of play without looking like an underwater hot air balloon?

also the trim pockets on a bcd question was a question for wetsuit, drysuit and skin diving not just dry suit

and with Nitrox id have to get a new dive watch or hire an unfamiliar one with nitrox capabilities as my Zoop doesn't allow for Nitrox. reality is that when i did my open water i wanted to eventually, maybe, possibly do my AOW to go to 30m then i did my AOW and have enjoyed access to more dive sites because of that and there are wrecks that i want to do that have led me to look into my deep diver qualification. point is Nitrox is something i never considered or thought i would want to do. if i had i would have got a different computer. seems that the deeper i get pulled into the diving world and the more i enjoy it the more expensive its getting which was fine but i got a mortgage recently so i am having to be savvy in my equipment and my destinations. also part of the reason i am looking into diving here, to save money

Get a drysuit. It needs to fit reasonably well but plus or minus 5kg body weight will be ok. Be realistic. Do not think 'I will loose weight so get it tight'. The best £1400 I ever spent was on a proper suit from o'three. Being warm and comfortable is worth the money. Being cold and wet is no fun.

Be realistic about your commitment. If you ha be a new house and need to spend time and money on it then buying a lot of kit may not be possible, getting time to go diving may be hard. We loose lots of divers to big weddings, new houses and job commitments.

Expect to spend £100/day diving in the UK. Being on the south coast it might be cheaper, but by the time you pay £50 for the boat, a bit for gas, petrol etc you are getting there . B&Bs for further away, rounds in the pub and so forth.

A week in scapa is £500ish for the boat £200 to £250 for gas and food plus getting there - say £200 sharing a car plus the odd extra night in a B&B halfway up. So it adds up.

Your Zoop will do. It does Nitrox but only one gas. Dive a twinset of the right gas and do the stops. Have the right suit and you will be happy spotting combe jellies for half an hour.

Join a club.

Wraysbury? Are you not in Brighton? There are a couple of lakes in Kent too, but you have the sea!

 

[Gareth J]

Generally, if you want to dive Scapa, then you need to book the whole boat. This tends to mean that you need to be part of a group or club that make the booking. There are opportunities to "fill" a space in a group if you are plugged into the scene. Either through a dive club, one of the UK dive forums, or by talking to the dive boats and saying that you'll take a space if anyone is having trouble filling the boat.
As a general rule, people prefer 'buddy pairs' to fill spaces, rather than single divers. A weeks diving in Scapa isn't cheap, so people prefer to dive with a known quantity buddy, rather than someone who could be a liability.

The deepest of the German wrecks is 42m to the seabed, most are in the late 20m to mid 30m range. The bigger battleships turned right over, so you expect the dive to be to the seabed. The small light cruisers are on their side, which means you can get quite shallow on them. Generally you would do better to choose one or two wrecks and repeat dive them due to their size --- no one ever does until they are on their third or forth trip.
The normal routine is a 'capital ship' (one of the German High Seas fleet) in the morning, then a block ship in the afternoon. So a deep morning dive and a shallow afternoon dive.
The 'shallow' blockships are not easy dives. They are in very tidal water with short slack windows, so in themselves can be quite a challenge.
The sensible procedure is to use Nitrox in the afternoon on the blockships, and a weak (air top) Nitrox the following morning.

If you are going you need to be able to deploy a DSMB, dive in current, and used to UK wreck diving.

Whilst there will be those that say you need a twinset, you can happily do it on a single cylinder (15l). Although I would strongly advise an independent bailout (i.e. minimum of a 3l pony).
It is true that all the trips I have done have either been on twinsets or CCR. But I have been on trips where some on the boat where content with single cylinders.

As others have said, most UK divers will expect to be doing some decompression stops i.e going beyond the no stop times. Some will run serious stops, some will run relatively short stops.

If you plan to dive in the UK, then a drysuit is a must. Yes it is possible to dive in a wetsuit in the UK, especially during the summer months. But you will cool down, and this makes the second dive less likely. Anyone who dives regularly in the UK will use a drysuit. This is because despite the add issues with drysuits (which are not as bad as people sometimes make out), you are far more comfortable and warmer. So if you plan to dive Scapa, you need to be comfortable in a drysuit.

Remember Scapa is Orkney - so even in high summer, the weather is not reliable. You should be able to dive every day, regardless of the weather, but don't expect to sit in the sun every day. We've been on trips in the summer where we have had blazing sun, sleet, snow etc all in the same week! Having a drysuit does make life far more comfortable!

Brighton has a BSAC branch (club), down at the marina from memory. That would be a good start. Dive clubs are like people, some are great, some are tolerable, and some are awful and best avoided. Interview them, check they are offering what you want/need. Its pointless joining a branch that does no training if you are interested in training. Don't join a branch that just dives the local pub.

Gareth

 

[dmaziuk]

I guess my wing isn't trying very hard, then...

Neither does mine, but that wasn't the question. The OP asked how the wing works and the answer is: the same way a jacket BCD does, only the location of aircell is different and therefore the basic trim physics is slightly different -- and that's where the "face in water" story comes from.

 

[Storker]

Neither does mine, but that wasn't the question. The OP asked how the wing works and the answer is: the same way a jacket BCD does, only the location of aircell is different and therefore the basic trim physics is slightly different -- and that's where the "face in water" story comes from.

You're spreading old lore. I'm saying that even if it's theoretically correct, the effect is too small to make any difference.

You're helping to uphold outdated, unqualified crap about how it is to dive a wing or a back inflate. The effect you're talking about isn't noticeable. At all.