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Jamie- A couple of points. First off it is not a good idea to do long deco dives in a wetsuit. Even though the water is "warm" it is not 98.6F and your core temp slowly but surely drops. This makes you more suseptable to getting bent and to narcosis and just makes your hang uncomfortable. But if you insist... The reason for using aluminum tanks when you are using a wetsuit is that their buoyancy is your backup. Should you have a problem with your primary buoyancy your backup system is to drop your weight belt (needed for AL tanks). Steel tanks allow you to dive with no weight belt thus no backup buoyancy. A drysuit performs the role of backup in this case. An obvious drawback of dropping your weights for buoyancy is the lack of control, you had better have a grip on an upline or be prepared for a ride to the surface. This is another good argument for using a drysuit when you have a deco obligation and have to resort to secondary buoyancy. Even with a drysuit it is not a good idea to excessively negative. Thats why AL stages are recommended when you have highly negative steels on your back and all the other junk wreckdivers carry. It is a shame that the simple facts mentioned above were obviously not outlined to the students in several of the recent series of tech diving deaths. Am I missing something? Can anyone come up with a reason why the above information should not be covered in a tech diving course? Or not acted on for the actual dive? I know the usual excuse is that "I've been diving steel tanks and steel stages in a wetsuit for years and nothing's happened to me" (I can hear Capt. Zero now....). Well there is something called "The Shit Hitting The Fan" which does not happen on every dive, maybe with some lucky people never. But does that justify the obvious shortcomings of this configuration when TSHTF and people die? Can you explain this to the friends and family of those who died? Jim Sender: Thomas A. Easop Date: 7/6/98 3:11 PM >Jamie Curtis wrote: > >> Firstly, I need to try to flame proof my cute little tush by prefacing this >> question(s) with the following: >> >> I'm not trying to defend any point of view, hogarthion, strokian or whatever. >> >> I just lost a boat load of money replacing all (I mean ALL) of my yaya gear >> with the right stuff. >> >> I'm getting ready to buy some tanks, and I need to get a better grip on the >> wetsuit/steel tank buoyancy thing. I mostly dive dry, but really love >> diving in a wetsuit. I have the Halcyon 65# and 15# wings. >> >> Please correct my poor assumptions - >> >> 1) My bathing suit has negligable buoyancy (pos or neg). >> >> 2) My gear and I are more buoyant in saltwater than freshwater. >> >> 3) My wings at 3/4 inflation provide the same amount of lift in 15ft of >> water as they do in 200ft of water. (Although at 200ft substantially more >> air is required to achieve 3/4 inflation). >> >> So, if I can achive positive buoyancy with all my gear(full tanks) in the >> deep-end of my pool with my bathing suit on, should I not be able to do the >> same at 200ft in the ocean with the exact same gear in wetsuit? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/trimix.html -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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