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Thanks for all the helpful replies, on and off list, generally concluding the the wing is for buoyancy and the suit should just be inflated to avoid squeeze. I tried this (in relatively shallow open water) on 3 dives on Saturday and it was much much better. Inflation of the suit becomes as automatic as clearing your ears, there is no unwanted dumping as you flex, and the autodump just looks after itself (in particular, dumping whenever you lift your left arm to dump from the wing, as Kent pointed out), so there is no complexity at all. I got rid of the ankle weights (finally!) but kept the gators, and had no problem holding a cave position just above the silt. I had a good test when my buddy decided that with 24 pounds and a 7 mm wetsuit he was a bit overweighted, and passed off 9 pounds to me (thanks!), which I think would have snapped the camel's back just trying to hold things on the drysuit. Karl wrote that starting students off with an AL80 and just the suit for buoyancy might have some merits, but Jim wrote that using the suit for buoyancy can make the "feet first ascent" risk higher. I feel that the advantage of having started with the suit alone is that I got a good feel of how the suit works, and how to dump just by rolling the body etc, but I did have some unpleasant dives this way and I wouldn't recommend it for doubles at all. Once again, thanks to all. Simon Richards ********************************************************************** This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No right to confidential or privileged treatment of this message is waived or lost by any error in transmission. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender by e-mail or by telephone at 212 403 3500, delete the message and all copies from your system and destroy any hard copies. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. ********************************************************************** -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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