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Thanks again for all the advice. I got in the pool for a while yesterday with my suit, after plucking up the courage to trim the seals :-) I used some bungie cord to hold my Jet Fins on (to avoid damaging the springs). After feeling how the boots are in the water though I wonder if (as someone suggested early on) I might not be best replacing the dry suit boots instead of my fins. Getting the latex socks fitted that go with rock boots and wearing wetsuit boots over the top? I assume this is possible (pretty sure there is a price for the conversion in the catalogue). Obviously I wouldn't be able to have thick insulation on my feet and still use my Scubapro fins but should do the job. I was quite happy with the feel of the dry suit in the water (and on land, certainly more comfortable than my semidry out of the water, hardly notice the neck and wrist seals by comparison, I was actually worried I'd made them too loose but no leaks). The boots were a little floaty and it was a bit tricky finning with fins barely on my feet. Despite this at no point did my feet feel like they were coming out of the boots and I had no problem flipping over and dumping air when I deliberately pumped a stack of air into the suit and inverted. I may have been a little over weighted though. With my aluminium backplate and STA and a three pound tank weight I had to add a little air to my wing to be neutral (with a near empty tank). This was with no undersuit though (save a T-shirt and Polartec 100 pants). I'm holding back on buying insulation till I know the temperature range I'll be diving in in SA. Still this encourages me to think I can probably get away with the same (or less) weight I use with the semidry. I didn't feel the need to add any air to the suit in the pool so it was a little difficult to really get a proper feel for drysuit diving (just felt like I'd been vacuum packed). I don't plan on taking the suit in the ocean till I've got the fin thing sorted, and bought some proper insulation (26 degree heated pool is one thing). Any tips? I'm thinking Actionwear might do the trick down to 15 or 16 degrees C (with a Plus 5 vest for if it gets a little cooler or I'm not moving much). I thought Thinsulate might make me too hot for single tank, no deco diving in anything above 16 degrees (particularly if I'm working), but who knows (only going on the info from the DUI web site). Cheers, Simon Simon L Hartley EnvSM Website Coordinator\First Year Course Coordinator Associate Lecturer School of Environmental Science and Management Southern Cross University P.O. Box 157 Lismore NSW, Australia 2480 Ph: (02) 66203251 or (61 66) 203 251 Fax:(02) 66212669 E-mail: shartley@sc*.ed*.au* http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/shartley/ http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/ -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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