Weight Belt on before or after BP/Wing?

[Marcos]

Hi all, I just bought a new Oxycheq BP/Wing setup and now I'm trying to get it adjusted right. One of my dilemas is do I put the weight belt on before or after this BC? The Harness system has a waist belt with a quick release buckle and a crotch strap. So I'm thinking in I put the weightbelt on first it's going to stay put because of the crotch strap. But then again I can release the harness waist buckle which will release the crotch strap and let the weight belt sink. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks Marc.

 

[salty]

With a wetsuit put the weights on over the harness

With a drysuit put them on under the harness

This has been asked befor and good reasons for doing it this way were listed. I could go into the details as I "rember" them but your better off doing a little searching.

 

[jonnythan]

Quick overview:

When diving wet, you should be able to ditch some weight because you grow more negative with depth.

When diving dry, your drysuit is redundant buoyancy in the case of a wing failure so you shouldn't need to ditch.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I always wear my weights under the harness. Even in a wet suit I'll never be so negative that I can't swim up.

Losing weights at depth would be a bad thing.

 

[HammerNoMore]

I always wear my weights under the harness. Even in a wet suit I'll never be so negative that I can't swim up.

Losing weights at depth would be a bad thing.

Same here. Always under for me.

 

[jonnythan]

I always wear my weights under the harness. Even in a wet suit I'll never be so negative that I can't swim up.

Losing weights at depth would be a bad thing.

How many pounds can you swim up?

 

[Wendy]

I always wear my weights under the harness. Even in a wet suit I'll never be so negative that I can't swim up.

Losing weights at depth would be a bad thing.

I also wear my weight belt under my crotch strap. I can still ditch the belt if I need to, without undoing the harness. Just undo the weightbelt and pull it through the crotch strap. I had asked bout this before to someone high on the totum poll and was told it was fine to wear it under the crotch strap even if I was wearing a wetsuit.

 

[pipedope]

I think the more important factor is having an overhead (physical or deco obligation) or not.
If there is an overhead you want to be sure the weights won't be lost by accident, i.e. you must do at least two things to drop weights. In this case the weight belt goes under the harness.

If there is no overhead limit then you can put the weight belt on top if you want to have the weight ditchable.

If you are not overweighted you are unlikely to ever need to ditch weight.

 

[String]

Same here. Always under for me.

Agree.

More incidents have been caused by weights being accidentally released than have been prevented by weight jettison.

If i dive with a deco obligation i do NOT want to end up on the surface by accident. I dont dive overweighted, i have a BC for buoyancy, a dry suit for buoyancy and a last resort by DSMB for buoyancy. My buddy also has all three of those.

I cant envisage any situation where i would ever need to dump weights underwater.

 

[MikeFerrara]

How many pounds can you swim up?

I won't ever be heavy enough for it to be an issue.

If it were though I only want enough ditchable weight to allow me to start the ascent. Also as Wendy points out I can het a weight belt off from under the harness without opening the harness.

Ditching weights is for establishing buoyancy at the surface. If your rig is such that you think you might need to do it at depth in order to get to the surface you might want to change some things which is one of the reasons that I won't use a heavy wet suit for deep dives in cold water.

When I dive my 1/4 inch wet suit and a single Al tank I have 4 pounds on a weight belt and another 4 on the upper camband with a stainless plate that's 6 pouns negative. Even with the tank full I can swim that up with ease from any depth that I'll take that rig to.

Also if I did lose the 4 pounds on the weight belt I could do a pretty good job of controlling the ascent until the very end if my tank is near empty. with a full tank I could manage without it.