Posted by brianc on May 04, 2001 at 14:00:33:
In Reply to: Re: Oh, I'm gonna hate myself for stepping into this... posted by Steve on May 04, 2001 at 12:30:28:
I dive dry (the temp up here has been in the 40's more often than not, with a max of about 53). I wear two layers of undergarments, one of them with a lot of loft. On top of being a big boy, that leads to my using a lot of weight - 39.3lb with my steel HP 100. I must do buoyancy checks about once a month in hopes of dropping weight, but any less and I'm on a no-stop ride to the surface once I get to 7-5 ft. I've been playing with my weight distribution for almost a year now and have finally hit on what is comfortable for me. I have 3.3lb on my ankles, 4lb as trim on my BC and the rest divided betweem my integrated BC and a weight harness so that I can dump 1/3 at a time. The trim weights are two 2lb bullets that I threaded onto the upper tank band of my BC. They are against the back of my BC with one on each side of my tank. Someday I'd like to try a backplate, but I'm pretty far north (3.5 to 4 hours north of Monterey) and local opportunities to try one have not happened yet.
I had been fudtzing around with my weight distribution trying to get my trim to the point where I did not feel the need to adjust my weights underwater. On a class dive, I was helping students with weighting (not sure if it was a peak buoyancy class or what). Anyway, I ended up carrying two 2 lb clip-on bullets and noticed how nice my trim felt. The rest is history...