Sudden loss of weight pouch

[DA Aquamaster]

The "before" pic is just a pic with the straps pulled back out of sight.

Some people say a camera never lies...the truth is the camera ALWAYS lies.

 

[spectrum]

How much weight do your buddies have in their pouches? I'm thinking of cutting about 10 lbs and then keeping some weight in the pockets.
Would it matter if I used hard weights or soft weights?

Hard or soft will not matter.

Collectively my wife and I have about 110 dives. With as much as 5 pounds per pullout. She has an older Seaquest DivaLX with the Velcro retention. I have current Sherwood Avid with the clip style keepers. So far so good. We also use some trim pocket weight and a belt. For my drysuit I added a DUI weight & trim to let me drop the weight below my hips for trim reasons.

Understanding good trim should be the driver behind where you distribute the weight.

10 pounds is the common max for ditchable pockets with very few exceptions. The limit is usually silk screened on the pocket.

 

[CWMurf]

How much weight do your buddies have in their pouches? I'm thinking of cutting about 10 lbs and then keeping some weight in the pockets.
Would it matter if I used hard weights or soft weights?

I don't know if they taught you this little trick in ow class but this is a good method to find your starting point for how much weight you need. Get geared up, flashlights and whatever gear you will be diving with, full tank of air if you have one. Get to where you are floating in you bc 5' or so above the bottom. Take a full breath. Dump all the air in your bc. With your full breath still in your lungs you should float with the waterline right about at your eyes. When you exhale you should sink. From there add approx 3-5 lbs to compensate the loss of air throughout your dive. The air in your tank actually is negatively bouyant, an aluminum tank at 500 psi will float. Once you get your weighting and bouyancy taken care of, then find places to shift the weight to for trim purposes. If you are neutral you will only need to drop a few pounds to become positive. Hopefully you will never need to do so.

Ultimately you want to be neutrally bouyant with 500psi in your tank. It is better to be negative then positive, within reason. A runaway decent can usually be dealt with, a runaway ascent can be deadly! Being too heavy has its own problems and your dives will be much easier and more enjoyable once you get your neutral weighting, trim, and bouyancy figured out.

I hope this is helpful to you and good luck with your pockets.

 

[Sounder]

Thanks to all for the responses, thoughts and ideas. I just want to let anyone know that I found a solution to the weight pouches falling out unexpectedly.
The manufacturer has sent a "kit" that they say will prevent the problem. I'm rather leery of this because if it works, why don't they just include it as stock material? I'll give it shot but it's about 3-4 weeks away. I have another fix.
I got the idea from DA Aquamaster when he referred to a 2 step process for dumping weight.

This process only required 2 Carabiners from REI. One for each pouch. The Carabiner attatches through a webbing strap on the pouch and the other end attatches to a unused D ring on the BC. (I'm using the D ring that is part of the adjustement strap on the cumberbun). If the pouch comes out by accident it will hang from my cumberbun strap. I just slide it back in and count my blessings. If I need it out I release like regular. Then unsnap the Carabiner. !! (I've practiced with my dry gloves to make sure I have no probs)
Simple solution that doesn't require any permanent changes. (I can't sew anyway!!) I'll compare this with the manufactures "kit" and see which works best.

Just thought I'd share my idea like everyone else who shared theirs with me.

Thanks again
- Rod

 

[DiverBuoy]

That does sound like a lot of weight in the pockets. If I'm diving cold with a lot of neoprene or a dry suit, and have to get up to the 24 lb or so, I like to wear a belt with about 10 lbs, then put another 5 on each side in my dumpable weight pockets, and a 2 lb in each of the rear non-dump pockets.

Now I'm using a Zeagle, so there are no pockets to fall out, or clips that don't work right etc.... It's one of the reasons I like their weight system, I don't have to carry spare pockets like we do with the other brands... But whatever system you're using, I might think getting some of that out of the pockets would be a good idea... and maybe even off your body entirely. If you dropped 15 lbs and didn't realize it, there is a small chance you might be slightly over weighted....

I agree with scubatoys about the design of the Zeagle (Ranger), with one exception, I personally think that they need to rethink their quick release ... the long complex, threaded red cable is really painful when teaching open water students, technically speaking the buddy pairs need to "experience" the quick release weight system. And too many local shops that sell the zeagle just get students to wear weight belts in the pool to get "past" this part of the instruction - which means the students didn't become familiar with their weight system's quick release. On the other hand a few shops change the order of the skills and really do the quick release last, but when your renting pool space and have a 10pm curfew with the pool owners and not a single student can figure out the dang quick release rethreading, it's the instructor and assistants that get stuck rethreading this thing, though we always take the approach of "teaching a man to fish" vs "feeding a man a fish" it still means a ton of extra work for us. Frankly I hate this design.

So no one confuses my comments with bias. I own a Zeagle Ranger personally, have dove it several times, do NOT currently dive it now personally. The only use it gets is when my 60 year-old father dives with it once a year for our scuba trips to the tropics. My permanent dive buddy also uses one, and swears by it.

 

[gcbryan]

Since it's somewhat related I'll throw out what seems to happen to many (including me). You get a steel tank and are able to remove weight from your weight belt/intergrated weights/ , then you get a backplate and are able to remove another 6 lbs or so. Eventually the simpliest solution for me anyway became using a weightbelt with far less weight and much of the remaining weight gets transfer via steel tanks, BP/W etc.

A weightbelt is a pretty simple and foolproof solution once you don't need so much weight. Having my weights fall off once would be enough for me to move on to another approach.

Just something to think about.

 

[Brian Gilpin]

Since it's somewhat related I'll throw out what seems to happen to many (including me). You get a steel tank and are able to remove weight from your weight belt/intergrated weights/ , then you get a backplate and are able to remove another 6 lbs or so. Eventually the simpliest solution for me anyway became using a weightbelt with far less weight and much of the remaining weight gets transfer via steel tanks, BP/W etc.

A weightbelt is a pretty simple and foolproof solution once you don't need so much weight. Having my weights fall off once would be enough for me to move on to another approach.

Just something to think about.

The type of experience you are having is sending up major red flags for you if I read your posts correctly. Dont ignore your intuition about the manufacturer kit. Go back to the drawing board with a new bc. If it seems like something is wrong then something
is wrong. Nothing is more bullet proof than a bp/wing.

 

[D1V3R]

this can be a problem with jacket bc's, i suggest usng a seperate belt if you cant figure out how to fix the velcro problem

 

[TSandM]

Just a word of warning about carabiners -- if they're the spring loaded type, they will open to admit anything that pushes against the gate, and then trap it. So they do present something of an entanglement hazard if you get anywhere near fishing line, kelp, or guidelines.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I'll second TSandM's comment. I use a carabiner on a lift bag used to send up an ascent line, but always use one with a locking carabiner to prevent it from trapping line, wire, cable, etc. Non locking carabiners have no place in diving.

The problem with using a locking carabiner on a weight pouch is that the process of releasing it is no longer very quick as you have to unscrew the collar on the carabiner before you can open the gate. Underwater for you, this may not be that big an issue, but then very few divers ever release weight underwater. Normally weights get dumped on the surface as a means of establishing immediate positive bouyancy in situations where bouyancy is neeed very badly, right now. What can make this even worse is if the person pulling your weights out does not realize they are just going to dangle from you by the carabiner.

At least when you use a fastex buckle over the top of a velcro secured weight pocket so that it secures the weight release handle it's still pretty intuitive to a diver, even one unfamiliar with your setup, what needs to happen to dump your weights and the fastex buckle still allows that to happen fairly fast.

Some of the BC's originally equipped only with velcro have been unpgraded with a modified system where the release handle pulls open a fastex buckle modified to come apart with maybe 10-15 pounds of force. It adds security but still keeps it a one step process.