New - At what depth and with how much air do you weigh yourself neutral

At what depth / with how much air, do you weigh yourself neutral?

  • At surface

    Votes: 27 48.2%
  • At 10 ft depth

    Votes: 7 12.5%
  • At 15 ft depth

    Votes: 21 37.5%
  • Deeper than 15 ft depth

    Votes: 1 1.8%
  • Less than 500 psi in tank

    Votes: 11 19.6%
  • 500 psi in tank

    Votes: 35 62.5%
  • 500 to 1000 psi in tank

    Votes: 3 5.4%
  • With full tank

    Votes: 4 7.1%
  • I don't weigh myself neutral

    Votes: 2 3.6%

  • Total voters
    56

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It really depend on the dives. Generaly it's on 3 meters with 50 bar (I took the 10 feet with 500psi as it's the closest in spirit).

But for shalow dives it will be on surface with 50 bar.
 
maybe it's the jet lag but I don't understand the question....
 
Jonathan,

How do you determine what amount of weight to carry in your belt?

Liquid,

Interesting point you make, will you please explain the why and benefits of each.
 
It seems the vast majority use 500 psi as the standard for determining neutral buoyancy. Since this is considered by most a good safety reserve to always exit with, unless we are forced to utilize it. (in rec. diving anyways)

Now the question is: Why:

at surface?

at 10 ft?

at 15 ft?
 
At the surface, cause it's the easiest way to do it. Put the weights on the dock/boat/buddy, add some if needed, or place some if too heavy.
 
and with as near to an empty tank as you dare.

Sit in the water on the surface and breathe it down if you must. But do it this way, because nothing is worse than not being able to do a safety stop or getting into a runaway ascent situation, both of which WILL happen if you weight to be neutral at 15 feet eventually. You'll overshoot by a bit and find yourself suddenly at 5 feet instead of 15!

I weight myself so that hanging vertically, with a tank down under 500 psi, ALL the air out of my BC, and my legs and arms crossed (so I don't inadvertantly move and create thrust!) the top of my head is about 6" under water.

Weighted this way I can stay down even in a low-gas situation if I must, I have no risk of doing an inadvertant ascent from the safety stop due to being lower on gas than I set up for, and I can do the final 15 feet VERY slowly (~1 minute or even more to get there.)

If I'm diving from my boat, I typically depart the anchor line for the line hanging below the boat's transom after my safety stop, swimming leisurely towards it and slightly upward at the same time. It takes me a minute or two to reach it, at which point I'm 6-7' down, then I do a vertical ascent from there to the surface.

When on a dive shop's boat they usually insist that I surface on their anchor line; I follow their protocol in that case, but that last ascent portion is still done VERY slowly.
 
Walter,

How is this one different from the original?

You can make multiple entries, unlike the other one.
 
Of course I will explain-

When diving deep (let's say deeper than 8-10 meters is deep for this issue) I'm going to make a safety stop at about 3-5 meters deep, and about 50 bar in my tank. That's the point in the dive where I will be the lightest, so therefore I will strive to be neutral at this point. When diving shalow (anywhere from 0.01 M to 8M) you gone be lighter, and the ration of difference between a meter up or down is the greatest. Everybody knows that at 1 M you need more weight than on 5 M. That's why on shalow dives I will aim to be neutral at surface with 50 bar (again, the lightest point of the dive).
 

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