Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Diving Catalina Island

[djackson99@aol.com]

Brian

Thanks for the details.  I too have rarely used a BC.  We dive hookah and just adjust the our breathing.  Its only a problem when wearing a 3 mil and going below 60 or so feet when the suite stats to compress.  If I do get a BC I'll be sure its fill button is a small, sharp, and hard to press. :)

Adding hard ballast will really not be hard to do.  I have plenty of room inside the area now used for the soft tanks. 

Not sure how to build them.  I wonder how deep a beer keg would go without compensation? Shouldn't be too hard to even build my own tanks into the space and just reinforce them with an internal frame.  Sealing the pin holes in my welding will be my hardest thing to do.

Hopefully the soft tanks will do the trick and hard tanks will not be needed.  I plan of finding out this summer.  --Doug J

Doug,

           As soon as I realized what was happening I pulled my air release cord on the other side of the BC, but since the air was expanding as I was accending I couldn't get rid of the air fast enough.  It seemed like I had a lot of air coming out of my mouth and I was breathing outward as I was accending, I wasn't breathing out hard but steady.  I didn't feel any problems with my body, we were not in a deco dive frame.    Before this happening I had not really considered it as something to be careful of.    The air inject and the air expel buttons are right next to each other on my BC the only difference is one is bigger than the other.

     Doug, on your boat if you had a hard ballast you would be able to control it better, but then it would probably change your whole design and add more cost also. 

        When I first learned to scuba dive we didn't have BC's I think we had some sort of saftey vest for the surface.  If you didn't use your BS you would have to be dialed in pretty closely to be neutral buoyant .

 

Brian

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