WKenny
Contributor
I dive in cold water, (i.e. Lake Michigan), with double 85 cu ft steel tanks and an aluminum backplate and wing. I use a drysuit for emergency redundant buoyancy, and warmth. However, I use the wing for ordinary buoyancy control with only enough gas in the drysuit to allieviate excessive suit squeeze. The rig is pretty stripped down with no extra weight on it. However, the rig is still probably about 15-20 pounds negatively bouyant near the end of a dive with a tank pressure of about 500 psi. Accordingly, on an ascent I need to have a fair volume of gas in the wing to maintain near-neutral buoyancy, (and avoid slipping into negative buoyancy), as I ascend. I'd ike to reduce the negative buoyancy of the rig, so I could carry less gas in the wing and make buoyancy control easier on the ascent. I was thinking about adding a positively buoyant, non-compressible hollow tube on the backplate and between the tanks to permanently reduce the negative buoyancy of the rig. Then I would need less gas in the wing to offset the heavy rig so there would be less "expanding gas" to deal with in maintaining near-neutral buoyancy on an ascent. Does this idea make sense? Is there any down side to it, as long as the rig does not cross over into positive buoyancy? Thank you for your comments.
