DIR question regarding trimming out the bp/w

[PerroneFord]

True Bob,

I had not considered the RIB divers and similar folks. That said, getting into a BP/W in the water should be as easy as putting the long hose in your mouth and rolling into the rig with your arms through the straps. I tend to lay on it, put my arms in, roll over so that I am underwater and hanging from the rig, then suit up. Generally goes easy from there.

-P

That could get pretty expensive for folks who dive out of a small boat ... where you have to get out of your gear in the water before getting back onto the boat.

Knowing how to don and doff your rig in the water is a valuable skill to have. Practicing it in a pool is just about the ideal way to get comfortable with doing it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Mike Edmonston]

Remember that when you take your rig down to depth, the compressed neopreme of the wetsuit will change your buoyancy and trim characteristics. I would say arch your back, keep your head up and bring your knees in towards you. You can always use clipper pockets to place weight on your bottom cam strap or tank band. That should help. But bringing your knees in towards you will have the biggest effect.

Cheers

Mike

 

[Divin'Papaw]

That could get pretty expensive for folks who dive out of a small boat ... where you have to get out of your gear in the water before getting back onto the boat.

Knowing how to don and doff your rig in the water is a valuable skill to have. Practicing it in a pool is just about the ideal way to get comfortable with doing it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Leah ... I'm still working out my trim myself and I've been diving my bp/w for 11 months! But I digress.

Since I'm currently taking a Rescue course I've been getting in and out of my gear in the pool quite a bit. Here is the procedure that I've found works best for me:

• First, I make sure there is enough air in the wing to float the rig, but not much more than that. You don't want the rig floating too high.
• Second, I make sure the long hose is clipped off and the slack is pushed out of the way to the right (left while facing my rig). I also make sure my bungeed alternate is also pushed over to that side and a bit back.
• Third, I make sure the two waistbands are pushed away to the sides and the two harness loops for my arms are pulled away from the plate and "opened up" to more easily allow me to get my arms through.
• Fourth, since my left should is much less flexible than my right due to two shoulder surgeries so I start with that arm. I put the left hand and then arm up and through the harness and then, in one motion actually, submerge slightly, reach up over my head and shoulder with my right hand and catch the right opening. I push my arm up through and surface. I then take a moment to straighten everything out.
• Fifth, I reach down and pull the left waist band forward and make sure it isn't twisted. I do the same with the right. I make sure the long hose and bungeed alternate are not trapped.
• Sixth, I grab the left waist band with my left hand, reach between my legs while bending at at the waist at grab the crotch strap with my right. I then thread the crotch strap onto the left waist band, grab the right waist band and feed in through the buckle and then fasten the buckle.
• Seventh, at this point I'm usually ready to let out a bit more air and make sure the rig is secure and tightened down.
• Eighth, I put on the bungeed necklace. Sometimes it's floating behind me and I have reach back and grab the hose at the 1st stage to find it.
• Ninth, I route the long hose and clip it off.

I found that a key is not to be in too big of a hurry. Rushing will only cause you to get things all twisted, kinked, trapped and you then pretty much might as well start over.

In something like this, which can be quite personal in terms of preference, YMMV.

Fun aside ... the first time I played the unconscious victim, it was fun to "watch" my buddy get to a point where he was just staring at my rig with no idea how to get it off. "What, no plastic quick release clips?!!!!!" Luckily the instructor is a big time cave diver and he used it as a great teaching moment to help the divers in the class learn how to get an unconscious diver out of a bp/w with long hose and bungeed backup at the surface.

 

[TSandM]

Leah, although I agree that a lot of this is posture, another option for moving weight down is a DUI weight harness. I know a fellow female diver who can't trim out a set of 72s without using a Weight&Trim and dropping the pockets low on her hips.

As I remember, you had some invitations from some more or less local DIR folks to dive with them, and you'll get some great feedback about your posture from them. They can also show you how to get in and out of the harness in the water, and a demonstration is truly worth a thousand words.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Was this your first session in a bp/w? If so, I would suggest losing the wetsuit. If the water is >78º, you'll be fine, I promise.
Personally I feel that if this is your first time in the bp/w, you need to take some baby steps, especially to help get rid of possible bad habits. Hop in with your bathing suit on and putter around. Work on your trim and buoyancy. Once you've halfway got that, then throw the wetsuit on.

Getting in and out of your gear in the water:
Let enough air out of the BC so that you are floating with your head out of the water but not too far. Undo the waist strap and completely free that from the crotch strap. Get out of the arm straps, then push down on the whole rig and sit on it. Now you have your own inflatable raft. Backplate up, tank on the bottom.

To get back into it:
While still sitting on your gear, take your arms and slide them through the straps, and slowly slide off your gear into the water. Your arms will go into the straps. Connect up the crotch and waist straps and you're done. Easy as pie.

In my humble opinion, putting the weights towards your back wasn't the best choice. In fact, it probably added to your turtling. Think about it--If you have weight on your back and you roll slightly to one side, now that weight wants to sink, right? So, it helps you roll over. Keeping the weight towards the front as much as possible helps keep you in good trim.

When are you planning on going to the pool next?

 

[alwaingold]

I recently took DIR-F and I had some problem with head heaviness, and got a lot of help with that in the class. A bunch of this has already been said, but here's what worked for me:
- Keep your head up. I cannot emphasize this enough. Beto must have reminded of it a dozen times in the class, it is really easy to forget and drop your head once you are thinking about something else. And once I drop my head, everything spirals downward from there.
- Keep your feet back, and fins horizontal. I always thought my fins were horizontal, and my knees at a 90 degree angle. But once I saw myself on the video, I found out that what felt like horizontal fins/90 degree knees totally wasn't. My feet were too far forward (close to my butt), and my fins were pointing quite a bit up. You really need someone else to look at you (or video you) to find out what position you are actually in. It turns out 90 degrees really wasn't right for me either, more like 110 degrees is what keeps me nice and horizontal.
- I've noticed that most people wear their weight belt on the waist, above the waist strap on the harness. Maybe that is because most divers are men This is too high for me, I put the harness waist strap above the belt. The belt is as far down on my hips as I can get it. I have to tighten it really well or it will sneak back up to my waist.
- Some combination of turning out my hips/ankles also helped. This is hard to describe in a web post, but it helps with what Tobin was saying about keeping your fins apart.

But yea, diving with more experienced divers who can watch you and see what's going on with your body position will help a lot. Good luck.

 

[Friggincold]

Arch your back keep your head up

 

[Charlie99]

Leah, as you go deeper, the neoprene will compress, and you will add some air to the wing to stay neutrally buoyant. Although that may or may not help the head up/head down orientation, it will definitely reduce or eliminate the tendency to turtle.

If you have the center of mass above the center of buoyancy, any equlibrium point will be unstable. In plain english this means that if you have a lot of weight (such as backplate) up high and lots of wetsuit buoyancy below it, you may be able to hover perfectly horizontally, but once you tilt a bit, you will have more and more force trying to roll you upside down. Adding some buoyancy up high (such as adding air to your wing) will help, as will adding/moving weight down low (shift weights to your stomach area, don't use any extra V-weights, try a lighter backplate, etc.).

Just as descending will help stability, so will going to saltwater since you will have to add about 6 pounds of lead, which should be added to as close to the front and as low as possible.

Take heart in that being shallow in fresh water is probably the most difficult area to get stable.

As you play around with weight configuration and trim, it might be useful to have 1 tank near empty and 1 tank near full, and swap back and forth between them to see how that effects you.

Charlie Allen

 

[SparticleBrane]

Leah, tell us a bit about this pool. Dimensions? Depths?
Perhaps I could be persuaded to come down and do some pool work with you at some point.

 

[UnderSeaBumbleBee]

Thanks again for all the help. I have been talknig with some DIR guys down in Atlanta and they are not sure when they will be up this way. Sparti and the gang are up at Fantasy Lake and as soon as it gets warm enough I am going to go up there. There is a whole host of SB folks up that way that have given me a warm welcome.

I am going to move my weights back to the front--13 lbs of it and then keep the butt weight for now 2 weights at 2 lbs each. They look like little yellow sausages hanging there--not pretty but they work. I am also going to get some bungee cord used for tie downs and thread that through a solid weight and see how that does as a removable tank weight.

Mike at the Scuba Shop in Spartanburg where the pool is said he would hook me up with an old cam strap off an jacket bc to use to attach the tank weight to see what I like best. Mike is a super guy. He caters more to purely rec divers and doesn't sell much tech gear, but when ever I popped up from the water and asked a question, he was very helpful. He did all the support diving for the movie the Abyss and he also has a tech and commercial background. It was the coolest thing to be able to say, hey let me try that and he would toss something in the pool.

I am going to try to go either this weekend or one day next week after work. I will need to work it out around their training schedule. I really feel before I get in low vis current at a new dive site that I really need to work a bit more. I want to put into practice some of the things you guys have suggested to see what works.

When I put the gear on, I did it just under the water with my reg in my mouth. I could take it off underwater with the reg and did not get tangled, but I did every time putting it on. I will try it with the reg clipped off and see how I do.