Various

[malin@xxxxxxxxxxxx (malin)]

>Sorry to disappoint you but I have seen one of the techies in my club 
>testing his kit in the swimming pool.  If I remember correctly he was 
>in a wetsuit (5mm?) with 2x7ltr 300bar cylinders on his back and 2x9ltr 
>232bar cylinders slung as stage tanks, had NO weightbelt and still had 
>to have some air in his wings to achieve neutrality with full tanks.
>
>I reckon he must have had nearly 8m3 (8000l) of air with him which 
>would weigh in at say 7kg, 

I would beg to differ. If he is using air or nitrox, it has a density of
about 1.2 kg/m3, so he's carrying about 10kg of air. It would be less if
he's using helium. It's got a density of about 0.17 kg/m3 


On bouyancy, I use a neoprene drysuit, and an ABLJ. I use the suit for
bouyancy compensation, and when deep (>30m) I find that there is more air
than I would like in the suit, and put some in my ABLJ. When diving with a
wetsuit, I find the ABLJ tends to put me too head up and if I used a wetsuit
a lot, I would get a stab jacket.

However, I can easily compensate all the bouyancy that I need with either
suit or ABLJ. 

Lyn's point on dumping gear on the surface if you have to rely on drysuit
bouyancy seems a good one. An ordinary weightbelt won't cost much more than
the repair on an ABLJ/stab/wings, and there's little risk of a bouyant
ascent once you've hit the surface.


On a totaly separate point, someone once posted an example of the elitism
that other newsgroups suffer from:-

"only a stroke would use viton O-rings"

My question is:- What is wrong with Viton?

Yours,
Malin