Heavy with doubles

[jduncan]

I find myself a bit heavy with my double steel 100's and aluminum plate unless I am wearing a heavy undersuit with my 2.5mm neoprene drysuit. I have seen plenty of divers with WAY more gear than I use and wonder how they can remain neutral and still carry all the gear? I'm not using any additional weight. How do you tech divers get around being overweighted with gear? I can't imagine what it would be like in a tri-lam suit!

J

 

[Rainer]

You're heavy both with the cylinders full *and* empty? How heavy? And what HP100s? PST/Worthingtons/Fabers/Asahi/etc?

 

[Doc Intrepid]

In a trilam suit, if what you are experiencing is true, you'd better be wearing double aluminum 80s.




Some real skinny guys are simply naturally negative. Putting a set of heavy steels on them (with an aluminum plate) is asking for trouble.

(Unfortunately, I don't have that problem.........)

 

[adamd]

im diving double aluminum 80s with a aluminum plate and a dui tls350 and am about 10 pounds over weight i am also just negative naturally

 

[Rainer]

im diving double aluminum 80s with a aluminum plate and a dui tls350 and am about 10 pounds over weight i am also just negative naturally

At the end of the dive????

 

[amascuba]

In double AL80's (Luxfer S80), with a 6lbs SS backplate, I have to add a 4lbs tail weight otherwise I get extremely floaty when my tanks get to around 1200psi. At 500psi I'm almost perfectly neutral at my 10ft stop with little to no air in my wing.

I'm 5' 8'' and 155lbs and wear a tri-lam suit with a 200gram polypropylene garment and some polyester underwear.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Even at the end of the dive a set of double Al80s will be negative. Not the tanks themselves, but the combination of the tanks, bands, manifold, and regs will be negative overall. Probably not anywhere close to 10 pounds, however.

 

[amascuba]

The Luxfer S080 tanks are 4.40lbs positive when empty, 1.50lbs positive when half full with air. Double up two S080 tanks together and that's 8.80lbs positive when the tanks are empty. I haven't actually weight my bands or manifold .. (That might be something to do when I break my tanks for for VIP soon.) I imagine that the manifold is close to 8lbs and the bands are probably a couple pounds each. I bet the tanks are close to neutral to slightly negative when empty.

Edit.... Actually ... my tanks DO float in the tank bath when I'm having them filled from 500psi and don't actually settle down until they have around 800-1000psi in them.

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

I'm 6'2" and 240lbs, bones and muscles that is. Heavy stuff... I dive doble steel 12 litre 232 bar ("HP" in your definitions?) on a 5 lbs steel plate. With both my old 5 mil neoprene suit (Naturally compressed at 160 ft...) and my new Gates/Hunter tri-lam rubber core I carry 6 kilos (13 lbs) + a bulky cannister. Around here that's considered normal. Remember, a 400 gram liner suit makes a lot of volum.

We're all different in shape, sizes and colors. There's just no set values for how much weight is ok. You have to do your homework yourself and find out, and if you are heavy you are heavy. And then you do something about it.

 

[Ber Rabbit]

Since I'm a "new to doubles" diver how do you define "neutral" when wearing them? Do you still get the tanks to 500psi and let all the air out of the wing? I now have in my stable a pair of Genesis HP100's which I have one dive on (my 5th dive in double 100's). I weighed the rig yesterday (glutton for punishment I know) and it was 107 pounds with 2100psi in the tanks. The tanks/bands/manifold were 94 pounds alone which is 66 pounds more than my weightbelt in my single tank set-up. I guess I'm wondering why the answer to the OP's question isn't "put a little air in the wing". My set-up feels fine to me but since I'm not very experienced with doubles my "feels fine" might not actually "be fine" but how would I know?
Ber :lilbunny: