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Now you've got me confused. Maybe this will help: I am making a basic premise that steel tanks for the most part are quite negative when full, which is not the case with AL. Therefore you have to add weight using a weight belt when diving AL. When using steel you generally don't use a weight belt (unless you are doing something silly like using an ABS backplate), thus the majority of your negative buoyancy is non-ditchable. Personally I have a neoprene drysuit and with steel 104's and a 14lb backplate. I don't use a belt or even a Vweight. But I do use an AUL14 on every dive which represents about 4lbs negative, and along with reels and other gear, I am capable of dropping about 10lbs should I need some extra buoyancy (rather expensive ballast, I must say). Jim Sender: Rowell, Ewan C Date: 7/9/98 7:37 AM >Jim, > >I wasn't arguing the case against dry suits. >I'm with you on that one. > >You said: > >> And how do you make yourself neutral at the bottom with no air in your >> >> primary BC and with steel doubles & steel stages? >> >Same as you would with aluminium ones, I expect. >After all, steel or aluminium, I'm just as negative if I was weighted >correctly at the start. > >> But in an emergency you can ditch the non-essentials, hammers, >> crowbars, >> lights, etc. while I would imagine you would not want to ditch your >> stages. >> >And what difference does having aluminium or steel tanks make? > >Surely the message is about being weighted properly, which I agree is >critical, >and that arguing about steel or aluminium is missing the point. > >Personally I'd be unwilling to do any dive that required stages in a >wet-suit because, in order to get my weight right for stops, I enter the >water about 25 pounds negative due to weight of gas. I'd be even heavier >at depth due to suit compression. In a dry suit I don't have the >additional weight AND I've got the redundant buoyancy. > > >Regards, Ewan > ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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