Posted by MHK on April 20, 2001 at 09:56:13:
In Reply to: Re: Wet Suit diving with a Steel Tank posted by Steve on April 19, 2001 at 22:22:57:
I sent George a copy of your post to get his thoughts and here is his repsonse. I've cleaned it up a bit so Chris won't take it dowm. Chris will use any excuse to take our posts down because he doesn't want the thruth to get in front of his nonsense..
From George:
This is not exactly true. First, I never said it that way, and second, this guy is not comparing all the moving parts correctly. A single 80 Luxfer goes from negative 3 to positive 3 and holds at most 6 pounds of air ( assuming worst case gas ). A steel 95 is neutral empty but holds about 9 pounds of air. With the aluminum, we are then looking at a neg 8 worst case with a five pound steel plate, and a little more than that with the steel tank and an aluminum plate.
What I said is that this is about the limit of that range for these items before body compression adds significantly to that negative 9 or 10 number. Add another tank of gas, more regs, etc, and you can't swim it up.
The other thing is that all these semantics and arguments are merely obfuscating the intent here: your rig must be such that you can stay down empty, and get up full ( either naturally or by dropping something ) with no wing use at all. This is the criteria, not the name brand of the tank.
The use of giant steel singles for open water diving is crossing the line into non "open water" diving, and implies that one is trying to use the wrong gear for the job. The Faber 95 is the limit of that argument for single tank ow diving, but then why are we using a single 95 for a 80 dive?
We go round and round with this - look at the reasons and the intent, and guide yourselves accordingly. All I can say is thank God I do not have to put up with anyone who does not get it. I do not know how the rest of you deal with this.
Hope that clears it up...
Later