To be afloat or not to float that is the question :P

Well this is my 1st article on the BC. I not attempting to write which is better or give a technical writeup of its functions. I am just going to give a no nonsense review of my BC.

Here is a picture of it...


Here is the back of it...

Still please take note that my BC is uncommon among Malaysian divers…. maybe you will see similar types when you dive with Singaporeans :D for now we can call it a backplate + wing BC…

From the 1st picture you can see that there is a lightweight metal plate which is attached by a harness or straps

From the 2nd picture you can see that there is the 2 CAM Bands that is use to wrap around the Scuba Air Tank and keep it from floating up to the surface when you are at the bottom of the sea hehehe.

This is a major part of your Scuba equipment. The ones you see at the Shop eg. in Mid Valley near the GSC cinema would be selling the Jacket Type BC. The reason they are called that cos they look like huge vest or jackets that you wear .

As you can see from the 1st picture, there the blue pockets.. thats not standard as I did some motifications to the original. Its purpose is to hold my Weights.

Yes you heard right, we are usually not heavy enough to sink on our own, this is because we got our lungs to thank for… so we need to add a specific amount of extra weights to help us to be able to sink hehehe scary eh?

Now I am about 79 KG so I usually sink very well with 4 KG of weights, thats like 5% give or take. But the thing is some guys are light but need more weights then me to sink. Its all down to your specific body type, that you can learn alot when you practicing in normal diving pool.

Note is that in the pool its not salty like the sea water, reason is Sea water with its salt content makes us even lighter in water. So generally we need 1KG more when we go diving in Salt water.



This above picture is showing the Low pressure Inflator Hose … the main job of this part is to connect to a device that has a air hose that hooks on to the shiny tip there beside the button. This is what you control to inflate your BC and deflate it.. Why?

It helps to control how much you float underwater :) Why do we need to bother with that is simple… as you move down the levels of water… the water you passed behind you will push its weight on you. Your air in and around your body like in the equipments will be compressed by the weight of the water… so what air you have on upper levels will begin to be less in volume.

This means you wont float as much. So in order not to sink anymore and maintain a certain deep , we need to allow air from our Scuba Air Tank into the BC. When you do that its counters the down ward force of the water above you and makes you neither float too much or float too little.. we call it Neutral Buoyancy..

This is learned from the fact most fishes have their own BC naturally built in.. thats how the fish seems to float in the water like a bee and not sink and crash into the corals or sand hehe…



Thats a picture of a Dump Valve… its uses is simple, pull the Orange Cord and it will let you dump the air inside your BC very very fast… I wont discuss in detail how to use this … but there usually are 2 Dump Valves on a BC… Mine has another one located near my left shoulder Straps infront. Just take note of the location of these Dump Valves is all .

So now you have the basic idea what this equipment is for :D. If you want to know more detail and more technical information you can sent emails to me or comments, I will try my best to answer them.. if you are working in the same Gym as me, I could bring this equipment and help you understand more about it.

Thanks for reading this blog, the next blog would be followed with other basic reviews of the Scuba Equipments we use to go diving…