Posted by MHK on April 20, 2001 at 12:37:45:
In Reply to: Re: Wet Suit diving with a Steel Tank posted by Steve on April 20, 2001 at 12:22:23:
The fact boils down to a few things that speak to a balanced rig, which the overwhelming majority of diver's don't have.
The majority of recreational diver's put all the weight on the weighbelt and then if they need to ditch all the eggs are in one basket so they run the risk of rocketing to the surface in the event of a ditch..
By properly balancing the rig a diver should have enough weight to stay nuetral at 15' with a couple of 100 psi in the tank...
With respect to the steel and wetsuit issue ( the other side of the coin if you will) is that if you loose your primary inflation source, and have no back up, witha stell tank at depth you have a wetsuit that will provide no bouyancy because it's compressed and a negative steel tank that will only add to the problem. Whereas by using AL tank[s] with a wetsuit should that same problem happen you'll have a tank that swings to positively bouyant and can help the situation..
In reality the major opponents of this philosophy just don't want to admit that they haven't even considered this issue until we brought it up and then of course need to justify this habit and do so by coming up with the most bizarre reasoning...
You have genuises like Chris outright lieing and guys like Seahunt who no matter how many times we tell him the same thing over and over and over only wants to hear what he wants to hear..
If he wants to dive wet with steel we don't care but all he keeps hoping and praying is that he'll create a fact pattern ridiculously stupid and dangerous enough that he'll get us to say go ahead and then he'll ignore everything else..
Carmichael and JJ told him many, many, many times why what he was doing was stupid ( well they're actually more tactful about it than I am, but the message was the same) and all he heard was that in some ridiculously stupid fact pattern that it was justified. Then he posted that MHK was wrong and that DIR advocates steel with wetsuits... He doesn't listen all he wants to do is try to prove me wrong about something, anything, wholley ignoring the fact that none of us who dive DIR would ever, ever be in a position as ridiculously stupid as he suggests...
He thinks that all we do is standardize our gear and that's it, he completely ignores that one of our primary goals is to SOLVE THE PROBLEM BEFORE IT HAPPENS, not justify one stupid thing with an equally stupid solution....
Steve, I'll keep responding publicly but if it's getting too stupid on this list send me a private e-mail and we'll work through it, but I'm not going to stand by while idiots like Chris and other's distort our position...
Later