Light on left thand

[RTodd]

....I've spent a lot of time ensuring I'm diving horizontally, and I do not want to do anything at anytime (barring a serious emergency of course) to make me come out of trim.

I don't want to bust on people with less than 100 dives with the admirable goal of developing good trim. However, maintaining perfect trim throughout the dive is completely unnecessary. In fact, it tends to make it hard to see what you are looking at. When conditions require it, you should be capable of staying in good trim. However, if you get a chance to watch some video of really skilled cave divers, pay attention to how they actually swim most of the time - at a slight head up angle. Otherwise, you spend the whole dive with your neck uncomfortably tilted up.

 

[Underwater Ogre]

The problem is rebreather electronics are all designed to be worn on the left arm (the cable comes out on the left side of the handset), so suddenly I need to be able to check something on my left. It seems like this one change screws up a lot of the system I have going...

I can use a vacuum cleaner with either hand

 

[LiteHedded]

this thread is comedy gold.

 

[ligersandtions]

I don't want to bust on people with less than 100 dives with the admirable goal of developing good trim. However, maintaining perfect trim throughout the dive is completely unnecessary. In fact, it tends to make it hard to see what you are looking at. When conditions require it, you should be capable of staying in good trim. However, if you get a chance to watch some video of really skilled cave divers, pay attention to how they actually swim most of the time - at a slight head up angle. Otherwise, you spend the whole dive with your neck uncomfortably tilted up.

Now you've got me curious....why would you want to swim in a slightly head up angle while in a cave, a (possibly) silty, overhead environment? I'm certainly not saying that you need to be horizontal with your head directly in line, such that you are looking only at the ground right beneath you. I was only saying that I generally try to keep my body horizontal, in line.

 

[TSandM]

When you are diving Al80 doubles, sometimes you end up with the back of your head JAMMED into the isolator, unable to see the ceiling in front of you. Then you HAVE to tilt up a very small amount, or you run into things. BTDT.

 

[RTodd]

If the ceiling is really low, yes you are completely horizontal. Looking ahead isn't real important in these sections anyway. There isn't that great a percentage of cave that is actually like this. In open water, you never really have this issue. Your post above, like many DIR divers, indicates a desire to always be in textbook horizontal trim. That just isn't how real world DIR dives occur. In the more typical swimming and looking around position, you would simply lift your inflator hose and be able to dump air. To use the rear dump you would generally have to tilt yourself down some. Nothing wrong with either. But, the common newbie DIR I have to be perfectly horizontal attitude tends to detract from the fun and comfort of real dives. You would be amazed at the actual swimming trim of some fairly well known DIR divers.

Now, you can't take any of this to extremes. Swimming in a near verticle position makes you a huge stroke that needs to go keep Jeff company on the 500 pool dives he has to go do to make up for his grave left hand error.

 

[ligersandtions]

I hope I'm not coming across as a know-it-all or one of the hard-core DIR (if you don't do it my way, you're doing it wrong) divers....I'm really just trying to learn as much as I can. I've been out with very experienced divers who were a lot of fun to watch....the control was amazing. I have worked hard to try to get some of that control, get my weighting and buoyancy down, and my trim to a point where I can be horizontal when I want, or feet up/down, on my side, etc when I want to peek in and look at something.

I enjoy the challenge of being horizontal when I want/need to be horizontal. I find that my ascents and descents are easier to control when I'm horizontal. And I, personally, prefer to use my rear dump valve rather than angling my body upward to let air out of the corrugated hose....just my preference.

 

[Belmont]

There's a mix of buffoonery and seriousness on this thread .
Very interesting as the guy on Laugh In used to say.

Now, for the the primary light's choice of side, I presently go for the right.
I might switch to the left but during my DIR training the instructor showed me the pros and cons of holding it on either side.

For now I prefer the right with the cord wound around my forearm because I do mostly wreck dives and the hanging lamp cord is too much of an entanglement hazard.

Now for argument's sake, blinding an OOA buddy with a lamp held with the right hand: the motion made in taking the primary on the long hose and donating it involves no direct horizontal vector to his line of sight. Actually when performed correctly the lamp should be aiming up all the time.

I wear my bottom timer on the left side and when I write on my wet notes I get enough light to see what I do.

Now, in March I'll be back in the caves in Mexico and then I will be holding my primary lamp on the left side.

 

[SparticleBrane]

 

[Vie]

Please correct any deficiencies in my understanding:

Offer air to OOA diver with right.

We hand the regulator second stage that we were breathing from (right hand takes the second stage from your mouth) to the "OOG" diver - this ensures that the OOG diver receives the appropriate gas from a working regulator. We don't use air.