Help me choose between Hog 32 and Hollis 25 wings

[CT Sean]

Hi all.

I'm transitioning from a standard BC to a BP/W and am trying to decide which I should get. The Hollis 25 lb wing or the Hog 32lb wing. I understand that the wing should be capable of both:

1. Floating my rig without me in it (which is no problem either way w/ an AL backplate and my weight on a weight belt)
2. Has enough lift to compensate for gas use and exposure suit compression. Here is where I'm having the problem.

Currently I dive up here (in New England) with AL80's and a 7mm one piece suit and it'll probably stay that way for a while.

AL 80 = 6lb buoyancy loss so with the Hollis wing I'd have 19 lbs to "dedicate" to wetsuit compression. I found an old thread on here that gave a rule of thumb of 1 lb of weight suit weight = 3lb of buoyancy. My suit weights 5 lbs so thats possibly 15 pounds buoyant.

So finally the actual question (I know it took a while to get here) Is it actually reasonable to say that a wetsuit could lose ALL or nearly all of of its buoyancy - making the 25lb Hollis wing perhaps "too close for comfort" for my application? Am I better off having a slightly larger margin of error than the Hollis provides?

thanks

Sean

 

[Scared Silly]

A wet suit loses most of its buoyancy in the first few atmospheres. While your thinking is for your current diving think about you future diving. Could you perhaps add a can light to your rig? What if you decided to switch to a SS backplate? What if you switch to a steel cylinder? What if you added weight to your back plate. What about going to a dry suit? All of which would add weight to your rig.

Given all that, if you were diving exclusively warm water I would say the 25lb would be fine but I would probably go with a bit more lift for future needs.

 

[NCadiver]

You are both on target also as your wetsuit gets older you it lose buoyancy.