Halcyon Weight Distribution

[MidOH]

Slightly foot heavy is how my travel rig is set.

I can still trim out perfectly flat if I reach forward. Or use the slightest foot movement.

 

[rongoodman]

At the beginning of the dive you’re going to be heavy by about five pounds from the weight of the extra gas in your tank, in addition to whatever buoyancy you lose from the compression of your neoprene, so you would expect to have to add some air to your wing to compensate. If you aren't doing so, you're probably underweighted and will have trouble holding your stop at the end of the dive. When you're doing your safety stop, with your tank down to around 500 psi, get flat or a little head down. You should be able to reach around and feel a fistful or so of air in the bottom of your wing. If there's more than that, shed a pound or so, but if you have to have the wing shrink wrapped around the tank in order to hold your stop, consider adding a little.

 

[Nick_Radov]

I don't think that diving without ditch able weight is a problem assuming you can build a balanced rig. A balanced rig is defined as something that you can swim up if your wing fails from the deepest and heaviest part of your dive while also being just heavy enough to hold your shallowest stop with all of the gas out of your wing.

The heaviest point of your dive is when the tank is completely full and you're at the max depth because of neoprene compression, and the lightest spot is the end of the dive at your shallowest stop.

Assuming you can satisfy those 2 criteria and I imagine you could with only 6lb of weight needed, then you don't need to worry about ditching weight, but it's easy to test next time you're out.

For recreational ocean diving it's still a good idea to have a few pounds of ditchable weight, even with a balanced rig that you can swim up. This is mostly so that you can establish positive buoyancy on the surface with a full tank and wing failure. There have been many incidents where divers ran into trouble and made it back to the surface, but then sank again and drowned. Consider what will happen if you have to make a long surface swim back to the beach or tread water in rough seas while waiting for the boat to pick you up.

 

[crofrog]

For recreational ocean diving it's still a good idea to have a few pounds of ditchable weight, even with a balanced rig that you can swim up. This is mostly so that you can establish positive buoyancy on the surface with a full tank and wing failure. There have been many incidents where divers ran into trouble and made it back to the surface, but then sank again and drowned. Consider what will happen if you have to make a long surface swim back to the beach or tread water in rough seas while waiting for the boat to pick you up.

Can always just ditch the rig

 

[SubSoul]

So here are a few examples of what I looked like with the weights in the waist pockets only (3 lbs in each pocket). Sorry for the poor quality as I grabbed them from a video. These probably do not represent my trim throughout the entire dive. My camera is normally attached close to my chest when not in use and my arms extended forward toward my head. I just felt like my trim was sloppy and I was constantly flutter kicking in an attempt to remain horizontal.

 

[MidOH]

Aren't those fins negative?

 

[SubSoul]

The pink ones are the RK3 regular (not HD) fins. In salt water, mine will float to the surface when I take them off. The black ones are the Mares Quattro Avanti which feel a little more neutral.

Aren't those fins negative

 

[crofrog]

I suspect you might be head heavy. Do you normally run the tank at that height.

 

[happy-diver]

My only other word of caution is make sure you're truly head light / feet heavy. I've see a lot of divers who are diving with negative "head up" trim and are actually head heavy and they have to drop their feet to become balanced. I'd recommend getting completely flat in the water and turning off all of your muscles and make sure your feet drop if you haven't. It's very non-intuitive and I and a bunch of people I know have chased their own tail thinking they were foot heavy.

And on another note, weight on the waist belt even if theyre bolted to the plate are a hindrance
and in diving a reduction of hindrances is best

 

[SubSoul]

I suspect you might be head heavy. Do you normally run the tank at that height.

Ahhhhh, I see it now. I have always placed the tank a little high with my previous BCD and it worked to even out my trim. I guess I didn’t even think about it when I got my new set up and just placed it on the tank as I normally would have.