how much lift do I need?

[drbill]

Hard to make really good estimates without knowing more about your personal characteristics (weight, muscular or pleasantly plump, etc).

Here in the "chilly" waters of SoCal, I wear 38 lbs of weight (I overweight myself to remain stable when filming on the bottom) and use a Hog 32 when diving my 7mm and a neutral buoyancy Al 80. In the tropics with a 3/2mm I use an 18 lb Sonoform wing on the same harness.

Personally I don't like a lot of lift in my wings because if the inflator sticks, it may over inflate and lift me too rapidly given that I'm holding onto a camera housing and may not reach the dump valve too quickly.

 

[AlexL]

While we're on the topic (sorry if this is hijacking your thread OP, but it might be useful for you too if I've done it right). but I've been trying to do some calcs to buy a bp/w, and if anyone has the inclination to look over them and see if they make sense (all metric numbers, celsius etc). I'm thinking this is telling me that 30lb (13.4kg) is more than sufficient - is this sensible... I'm not sure about the adjusting for salt water.

23 degree salt water
Single AL80
5mm wetsuit
Max depth 30m
SS plate
Weigh 75kg

im slightly heavier then you are (85kg), and did that profile in caymens a year ago. i use eric's plate, so i dont know how that compares to a 'standard' plate.

5mm in salt took 22lbs/10kg.
5mm in fresh took 8lb/3.5kg.
lavacore in salt took 6lbs/2.7kg
lavacore in fresh is ~-1kg all up, and has no ditchable weight.

you'll likely need slightly less. ive been happy with my 24lb wing, but wouldn't dive it with the 5mm in salt again, would likely opt for a slightly bigger wing in that case. 30lb seems about right.

 

[mlevsky]

Awesome.. Thanks for the reply Alex. I'm feeling a little more confident on buying now. Will be great to finally get away from the jacket, it's felt terrible ever since I did Fundies.

 

[AlexL]

Awesome.. Thanks for the reply Alex. I'm feeling a little more confident on buying now.

no problem.

another thing to mention that i forgot to on my original post is that salt with that much neoprene is inherently unbalanced; due to the buoyancy swing with depth, wing failure at full neoprene compression depth puts you quite negative, ditching puts you quite positive.

not something id pay much mind to over a hard bottom within max depth, but wouldn’t splash into the abyss without a source of redundant buoyancy.

 

[mlevsky]

no problem.

another thing to mention that i forgot to on my original post is that salt with that much neoprene is inherently unbalanced; due to the buoyancy swing with depth, wing failure at full neoprene compression depth puts you quite negative, ditching puts you quite positive.

not something id pay much mind to over a hard bottom within max depth, but wouldn’t splash into the abyss without a source of redundant buoyancy.

Yep - cheers for the heads up