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Let's recapitulate: We have a wet suited diver with a heavy rig. He decends to 250' and is unable to stay neutrally buoyant. The focus of this list seems to be on bondage wings. As much as we may dislike that bungee it does not explain why the wing doesn't inflate or stay inflated. The only point is that if the bungee is too tight and the wing leaks, the bungee straps will aid deflation. I believe it's more productive to look for a dump valve jammed in open position, a broken inflation hose or a quick connect inadvertently turning into a quick disconnect. Pool training -- good point. There's no need to do it at 250' if it doesn't feel right at 10'. The best way to learn the characteristics of a new rig is to do long shallow dives. Wet suit is a liability at depth. The suit does compress and has to be compensated with the wing. Jammer Six says, "neutral is neutral". Nope! Any neoprene suit is worthless at depth -- with a neoprene drysuit you can at least put extra air into the suit while with a wet suit your entire lift relies on the wing. Even if Florida temperatures make the use of a wet suit at 250' sufficient (which I really doubt) it's still a lousy choice in terms of buoyancy. In fact, if you dive a wet suit you'd really need a dual bladder wing to stay redundant. Conclusion: Don't use a wet suit for deep diving. It would seem we're talking a combination of heavy tanks + wet suit and a FAULTY wing. As somebody suggested, the problem could very well be a low dump valve cord caught during donning. Still, if this guy really used a dual bladder wing he should have been able to inflate the other one. Evidently, this was not done. Since we can presume the instructor tried to put gas into any BC bladder this student diver was wearing, it's unlikely that unfamiliarity with the rig can explain this. For some reason, it seems, the wing(s) did not take or hold the gas. Why it did not is the main question to be answered. A simple test before going in on any dive is to inflate your BC fully and test that it works. This simple precaution will alert you to any leaks or open pull dumps. It should definitely be part of any pre-dive check list. Conclusion: Don't jump off a boat before wing inflation has been verified. The only other option I can think of is that initial weight and wet suit compression was too much to compensate for, even with a fully inflated wing. It would have to be a small wing for this to be true. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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