First BCD, want integrated weights, mostly for travel

[MichaelMc]

You are talking about when focused on that one task, in a pool, in clear warm water, you can manage massive amounts of over or maybe under weighted. Great.

Now have some other issue with your gear or your buddies gear that you need to deal with, maybe in your home cold dark waters. You can no longer affort to focus your attention on overcoming the massive air bubble in your BC. If you go even a bit out of the zone, you may lose buoyancy control and all that air will make that worse as you change depth. IT IS UNSAFE.

The notion that your weighting has been in increments of 10 lb. is NUTS.

Please reach out in your new city and find a place that does a buoyancy class. Talk to them about it. Ask what size weights they use to tune weighting. Take their class in the pool. If they, in that class, use 5 lb, or even 3 lb. minimum adjustment increments per side, RUN. They are wasting your time. You should be using 1 lb. weight increments. As even that makes for 2 lb as you want L/R balanced.

Yes, really fine tuned divers can notice small differences. But 2 lb total L+R is not too fine tuned to worry about.

 

[bvbellomo]

Just to clarify, when we say x pounds over/under weight we usually mean from neutral at the safety stop with near empty tank. So even if you were perfectly weighted for the SS, you will start the dive overweighted due to the gas in your tank, likely 5 lb. for an AL80.

So being overweighted at the SS just makes worse that early dive gas over weighting.

+1 on your dive op using 5 lb weights as the smallest they have. THAT IS INSANE!! Find a better dive op!! If that is all you have seen, no one has been teaching you to dive. Not your fault, but theirs.

Maybe I remember the increments wrong, but I do remember this was a bigger problem for the smaller people, as 2 weights go by your hips, but not much you can do with 1 weight.

 

[bvbellomo]

You are talking about when focused on that one task, in a pool, in clear warm water, you can manage massive amounts of over or maybe under weighted. Great.

Now have some other issue with your gear or your buddies gear that you need to deal with, maybe in your home cold dark waters. You can no longer affort to focus your attention on overcoming the massive air bubble in your BC. If you go even a bit out of the zone, you may lose buoyancy control and all that air will make that worse as you change depth. IT IS UNSAFE.

The notion that your weighting has been in increments of 10 lb. is NUTS.

Please reach out in your new city and find a place that does a buoyancy class. Talk to them about it. Ask what size weights they use to tune weighting. Take their class in the pool. If they, in that class, use 5 lb, or even 3 lb. minimum adjustment increments per side, RUN. They are wasting your time. You should be using 1 lb. weight increments. As even that makes for 2 lb as you want L/R balanced.

Yes, really fine tuned divers can notice small differences. But 2 lb total L+R is not too fine tuned to worry about.

I said 5lbs increments, and that I might be remembering wrong.

I want to do a buoyancy class using my own equipment, or at least my own BCD. But first I need to figure out which BCD to buy.

 

[MichaelMc]

If "The smallest weight we had was 5lbs", then your options were 0, 10, or 20 lbs.

(ETA: well you might have say 7 lb. etc weights so it is not always as drastic. But that is still NUTS.)

 

[bvbellomo]

Back to the Zeagles, I think both the XT and older Covert have 2 weight pockets, 8 lbs each, with and additional 10lbs of non-dumpable rear trim on the XT. Does anyone if that is correct? If so, then both units are pretty similar, as adding 10lbs or less trim to the rear of the older Covert is probably a good idea and not that difficult.

If the XT really is meant to hold 56lbs of weight and comes with a multitude of extra pockets, then maybe it really is worth the extra $, especially if there is any chance of using it in colder water.

 

[bvbellomo]

Does anyone know anything about the older Covert LP review about how the "Tank strap will not fit a standard 23" aluminun tank"? I am not really sure what tank they mean, as isn't an aluminum 80 longer than 23 inches, less than 23 inches circumference and much less than 23 inches diameter?

Should I dismiss this as a reviewer who doesn't know what they are talking about? Or is there a widely used tank this won't work with?

 

[MichaelMc]

I would see if you can go to the shop's pool and play with lead in just swim suit, mask, and snorkel. Find what lead makes you neutral on the surface with a comfortable lung of air. That will give you a starting point for BCs.

Or buy some lead and play in the community pool. I find 1 lb and 3 lb the most useful increments. I can make any amount that way and have 1 lb adjustments per side available.

Play around with that Buoyancy work sheet a bit. That should give you a reasonable idea of the contribution of suit tanks and BC. But your body contribution only you can find out.

The BC need not be as fine tuned as the weighting itself. But it needs to handle the most you reasonably expect to need.

I do not read the XT specs has providing pockets for 56 lb. of lead. I do think the XT having trim pockets makes it more preferable to the non-XT. Built in trim pockets are often tighter to your back and thus less prone to turtling you than those added on tank straps. This assumes that the XT trim pockets are usefully high up on the back and not just barely above the waist belt. And that weights are not prone to falling out of them.

 

[eelnoraa]

The need for even lb of weight on each side is really not necessarily even for beginners. Think beginner side mount. The fact is even with weight balance in each side, a OW student will need to some practicetay balanced. No difference if you carry a few lb extra on one side. Once you get it, you don't even know.

 

[bvbellomo]

My friend, I am genuinely reluctant to engage with you further on this because your posts reflect such an apparent lack of understanding of basic scuba diving concepts. First, as I hope you know, there is a very simple test one can and should do upon entering the water to determine if one is weighted properly, it's actually called a buoyancy test! How To Perform the Ultimate Buoyancy Check

Second, I don't know who you are diving with, but find another operator. The idea that you were limited to only 5 lb weights is absurd, and dangerous. There's no way you would ever be able to dial in your buoyancy using such a gross measure, you need 1-4 lb weights.

Third, in re-reading your post, I have no idea what this means: "Dangerous means ascending faster than I want to or descending when I don't want to. At least within the my limited experience and controlled environments, this involve far more weight than I'd ever intentionally carry." This is what buoyancy is all about, controlling descent and ascent through weight, trim, and breathing.

Finally, I do sometimes wear a 3mm wetsuit in warm water; when I do, I'm usually using 10-12 lbs.

I'd encourage you to engage. I have 6 months to learn buoyancy, and will learn better in the BCP I actually use. You already own the BCP I am most likely to buy, and we are the same height and weight. Slightly off topic - one reviewer posted he wishes it were longer. Do you feel that way?

I was taught this test in class as you posted it (used up tank, empty BCP) and in the pool we were given a full tank and the instructor told us how much air to put in the BCP to offset the difference.

I was told to breath without thinking about it and see if I go up or down. I can't. The harder I try to not think about breathing, the more I think about breathing. I don't think people realize the amount of lift fully inflated lungs gives versus completely empty lungs. So I know I am underweighted if I rise overall or stay in the same spot but feel my lungs have less air than normal - or vice versa. But there is a surprisingly wide range of weight where I go up on inhale the same distance I go down on exhale and I just can't tell.

 

[Saboteur]

There has been many threads on here about instructors overweighting their students to make their job easier. When you did your checkout dives how much weight did you use?

They certainly do. My son just did certification training, pool 10 lbs (no suit), OW checkout in tropics 12 lbs (no suit). After he was certified we whittled that down to 4 lbs.