DIR- Generic Bulk without warmth?

[DiveLikeAMuppet]

How much gas do you actually have left in your wing and do you have any gas in your drysuit or are you shrink wrapped?

I wouldn’t optimise for Fundies but for the type of diving and environments that you aspire to dive. Fundies get treated as the pinnacle of diving but in reality it’s a four day remedial open water course, you get a pass and realise there is so much more to learn and so much more gear to carry.

You can get away with excess gas in a drysuit if your trim happens to be level. If you plan to continue with cave, correct trim could be heads down or heads up, to copy terrain. You want as little gas as possible trapped in your feet. Gas escaping around your neck seal is equally annoying. So thick undergarments (Santi BZ400X, Fourth element Halo or others) work in cold water but are less fun to dive and a moving gas bubble is major pain. Something like Weezle is even worse.

Also, on open circuit, you are almost never perfectly weighted. You might be renting different tanks at different locations and might carry multiple stages. A full ali80 is perhaps 1 kg negative, half full neutral - so you get a large swing even between dives.

In an ideal world you can be perfectly neutral with no gas in suit or wing with almost empty tanks but in reality you just get on with it because there are so many other variables .

 

[crofrog]

In my Fundies class I dove an AL backplate with zero weight and still had a decent amount of air in my wing at 500psi with HP100 doubles. I am wondering if anyone has a good recommendation for something to add some bulk / buoyancy without being too hot. The 4E Arctic is too good at being low bulk for me I guess. Otherwise a set of AL80 doubles may be in my future.

You're not going to achieve "perfect" weighting with doubles consistently and every time you change something you're going to need to adjust a bunch of stuff. I would always rather be a little heavy than a little light when it comes to finishing these dives.

That being said HP100s are horrible. I know some people love them, but I went on a tank vision quest back in the day and they're by far my least favorite tanks. My wife and I both switched to Double 133s, the faber and PST 100s end about -1lb neg per tank, the faber 133's end about +1lb which means once you add bands they're significantly less negative.

Our team has standardized on double-80s for diving wet or Mexico, and double 133s for diving locally and in fl.

 

[Barefoot_Lawyer]

How much gas do you actually have left in your wing and do you have any gas in your drysuit or are you shrink wrapped?

I wouldn’t optimise for Fundies but for the type of diving and environments that you aspire to dive. Fundies get treated as the pinnacle of diving but in reality it’s a four day remedial open water course, you get a pass and realise there is so much more to learn and so much more gear to carry.

You can get away with excess gas in a drysuit if your trim happens to be level. If you plan to continue with cave, correct trim could be heads down or heads up, to copy terrain. You want as little gas as possible trapped in your feet. Gas escaping around your neck seal is equally annoying. So thick undergarments (Santi BZ400X, Fourth element Halo or others) work in cold water but are less fun to dive and a moving gas bubble is major pain. Something like Weezle is even worse.

Also, on open circuit, you are almost never perfectly weighted. You might be renting different tanks at different locations and might carry multiple stages. A full ali80 is perhaps 1 kg negative, half full neutral - so you get a large swing even between dives.

In an ideal world you can be perfectly neutral with no gas in suit or wing with almost empty tanks but in reality you just get on with it because there are so many other variables .

I am adding gas to my drysuit, but not much for 20’. Just enough to avoid squeeze because I don’t want to deal with a gas bubble. I 100% agree on not optimizing for fundies, but the rest of this summer a lot of my diving will be practice for my fundies tech upgrade at 15 to 20’ deep at a platform where I can set up a GoPro, then dropping down to 30 or 40 to do a min deco ascent…rinse and repeat. I would love less gas in my wing if I can achieve that - just don’t want to give myself heat stroke.

I already like my setup for cold water (BZ400, Dry Gloves, Waterproof 5/10mm hood) and they add enough buoyancy that I don’t have this concern.

You're not going to achieve "perfect" weighting with doubles consistently and every time you change something you're going to need to adjust a bunch of stuff. I would always rather be a little heavy than a little light when it comes to finishing these dives.

That being said HP100s are horrible. I know some people love them, but I went on a tank vision quest back in the day and they're by far my least favorite tanks. My wife and I both switched to Double 133s, the faber and PST 100s end about -1lb neg per tank, the faber 133's end about +1lb which means once you add bands they're significantly less negative.

Our team has standardized on double-80s for diving wet or Mexico, and double 133s for diving locally and in fl.

Man, I thought LP95’s were the worst! Maybe I am overreacting to Francesco or maybe I didn’t explain properly to him that I don’t really dive 70+ degree water in Minnesota unless I stay above 20’, but he said I needed to look at getting gas out of my wing. Maybe that was specific to just the fundies class at Gilboa. This issue will solve itself in Mexico if I dive AL80’s for my evaluation.

 

[crofrog]

Man, I thought LP95’s were the worst! Maybe I am overreacting to Francesco or maybe I didn’t explain properly to him that I don’t really dive 70+ degree water in Minnesota unless I stay above 20’, but he said I needed to look at getting gas out of my wing. Maybe that was specific to just the fundies class at Gilboa. This issue will solve itself in Mexico if I dive AL80’s for my evaluation.

LP95's are kinda horrible too. The issue is any of the shorter tanks are a pain in the ass to trim imo.

I think it's a great goal to finish your dive with minimal gas in your wing, but being 3-4lb's to heavy is _way_ easier to manage than being 2lbs to light. The only time you're going to end up light is if things go pretty wrong so I'd get use to being a bit heavier.

In cave 1 for instance. If you start with the lowest amount of gas allowed (100cuft) in Double AL80s your lowest start pressure is basically 2000psi, and you're allowed 400in, and 400 out. Meaning you're getting out of the water with 1200psi or so. You do not want to be light trying to stay off the roof of the cave, when you're trying to use that last 1200psi to save your life.

In Tech 1, you'll have significant back gas reserves unless you've lost a stage and you're decoing on back gas or you had some sort of issue leaving the bottom, once again, staying down is important.

 

[grantmac]

Which HP100s? Worthington, PST and Faber all dive different.

 

[Barefoot_Lawyer]

Which HP100s? Worthington, PST and Faber all dive different.

Mine are Faber. They were good enough to be approaching a first time tech pass in Fundies (unfortunately, I wasn’t consistent enough with my skills to get a tech pass, but the tanks were good enough! Ha!)

 

[crofrog]

Mine are Faber. They were good enough to be approaching a first time tech pass in Fundies (unfortunately, I wasn’t consistent enough with my skills to get a tech pass, but the tanks were good enough! Ha!)

The tanks won’t make or break you. You dive the rig. The rig doesn’t dive you, but when your learning some things are definitely easier than others.

 

[Barefoot_Lawyer]

The tanks won’t make or break you. You dive the rig. The rig doesn’t dive you, but when your learning some things are definitely easier than others.

My shortcomings were 100% all my own. I am glad that I had them so that I could learn from them in Fundies class. As an AN/DP certified diver, those shortcomings are pretty eye-opening.

I could have killed a buddy from my AN/DP trailing. I am committed to not coming anywhere close to killing a teammate.

 

[rjack321]

Fundies @Gilboa in Ohio was 78 degrees. Fundies tech upgrade practice @Wazee is 70+ right now at 20’, but that’s a 3 hour drive. The mud hole 1 hour from my house (Square Lake) is 75.

At those temps just take off your hood and gloves and wear your normal undergarments

 

[Fat old english bloke]

If you want to add some positive buoyancy, you can stash some insulation material where a V weight might normally snuggle in.

Not sure how much buoyancy you could add here, or what material is optimal (obviously you don’t want something that will compress at your target depth), but it will make you lighter in the water.