Juggling computer and inflator hose

[Charlie99]

at the surface you should have an empty BC and be able to exhale to sink. So to keep away from runaway acents making yourself Neg at depth will make you neutral at the surface. For the 3 min stop, add just a slight bit of air and you stay put. This does require good weighting though. Hard to stay put when over or under weighted.

Am I incorrect in this? I would think a runaway ascent would be far more dangerous than a little more energy to Fin up to the surface.

It's not incorrect, but it also isn't the easiest way to do it.

My suggestion is to first practice hovering motionless at the safety stop. If you are within a couple pounds either way of neutral than your breathing pattern can keep you at the stop level. Being horizontal gives you more drag in the up/down direction and makes it easier to stay in place. Watch the gunk in the water to keep track of whether you are going up or down at any instant.

Once you have developed the skill of staying in a motionless hover at safety stop depth, then using those same techniques to control your ascent is a relatively small step.

Being negative, vertical and finning upward works, but is a lot harder than horizontal once you have developed the skill.

Again, my suggestion is to focus on staying still at the safety stop, and once you have honed that skill, then the ascent control comes almost automatically.

Another huge benefit of developing this skill is that you will get a good "feel" for being neutral, and learn how to adjust your BCD during the dive such that you stay at a constant depth whether or not you are finning. Diving suddenly becomes a lot easier.

Charlie Allen

 

[MikeFerrara]

at the surface you should have an empty BC and be able to exhale to sink. So to keep away from runaway acents making yourself Neg at depth will make you neutral at the surface. For the 3 min stop, add just a slight bit of air and you stay put. This does require good weighting though. Hard to stay put when over or under weighted.

Am I incorrect in this? I would think a runaway ascent would be far more dangerous than a little more energy to Fin up to the surface.

Lets start at the begining. Your tank is full and you're correctly weighted. That means that if you are using an 80 cu ft tank that you are about 6 pounds negative (so you are neutral at the end of the dive). If you empty your bc completely at the surface you'll sink like a rock. Only let out enough to get neutral and then exhale to start your descent. Now you're descending in a nice controled manor and you can easily halt your descent at anytime. Of course add air as needed to compensate for suit compression and compression of the air that is in your BC. It works better if you're horizontal.

Once at depth, depending on exposeure protection, you could be significanty negitive with no air in your bc. While you should be able to swim it up, being close to neutral at all times gives us the most control. Being slightly positive while ascending doesn't present any greater risk of a runaway ascent than being neutral when you're not ascending. Before the BC was invented there wasn't much of a choice but now we can dive nuetral.

Adding to what Charlie said, I would start my practice at the surface. Start by getting neutral and pratice descending by controling your buoyancy on the way down....NO feet...don't kick. Get horizontal and descend by controling your buoyancy.

One side effect of not making divers get a good handle on buoyancy control before we certify them is that they can't do a good job of descending and ascending until they do. The dive usually starts with a descent and the infamous butt first plumit or firemens slide down a line don't count. LOL

 

[GA Under Water]

The dive usually starts with a descent and the infamous butt first plumit or firemens slide down a line don't count. LOL

ha ha I have seen this done.

Either way, the ascent should be slow enough to switch back and forth between your Guages and inflator without much trouble.

 

[MikeFerrara]

ha ha I have seen this done.

Either way, the ascent should be slow enough to switch back and forth between your Guages and inflator without much trouble.

Yes. It should be slow enough but add a light in one hand or maybe you're reeling up an SMB line on a reel or a spool. Having your depth guage on a wrist just gives you one less thing that you have to find a free hand to do and it's always in front of you.

 

[GA Under Water]

Agreed. I get so into working what I have to save money, that I forget that sometimes it is easier to purchase another gadget.

 

[MikeFerrara]

As long as you're not using a air integrated computer that needs a hose, you can pull your depth guage or computer out of your consol and put it on your wrist without buying anything. At least not more than a couple of bucks worth. Usually you don't even need to buy a wrist mount for the guage. Most of them don't have long enough straps to go around a dry suit cuff but buckles are a pain in the butt anyway. We usually just use shock cord so you can just slip it on. We even replace watch bands the same way.

With a depth guage that's made to go in a boot you can put a piece of rubber (piece of an innertube) around it to protect it, put a hose clamp on it with another rubber band over it (to hide any sharp edges) and hook your shock cord to the hose clamp.

Some computers have a slot in the cover made to accept the buckled, usually too short, wrist bands that they sell for them. Just slip a piece of weight belt webbing through. Burn some holes and run your shock cord through...or just run a coupe of pieces of surgical tubing through the slot.

Bingo you have a wrist mount that works better than the junk they sell and all you need is stuff that any self respecting diver has laying around anyway.

 

[Strima77]

I agree with the above. I have a Cobra and hang it off a retractible cord clipped in the front. It sits just right to glance down and check it.

 

[GA Under Water]

If I ever buy a new computer I am just going all out and getting the hose-less. Why buy a computer and not get top of the line?

I am a comp geek for a career so I know how fast computers go out of date I see no reason to shorten the life of my computer due to lack of servicablity even if it is by a year or 2

Get a new one and get 10 years instead of a used one and only get 5

 

[JessH]

If I ever buy a new computer I am just going all out and getting the hose-less. Why buy a computer and not get top of the line?

Because top of the line isn't always the best. When you pay for extra features ask yourself if you really need them and if there are any disadvantages to having them. I personally don't like the additional failure modes of hoseless AI computers. In addition to that the advantage is too small to be worth anything to me. Resale value aside if you offered me a hoseless AI computer and a non AI computer for the exact same price I would take the non AI.

~Jess

 

[JessH]

Mike, sounds like the way you do ascents is about how I do it, although I am sure you are much more skilled at it. I almost always ascend and descend horizontally, with the exception of the last 10 or 15 ft on ascent. I need to know that there is no boat or anything else to run into when I ascend those last few feet.

~Jess