Thanks to all of you for your help. I guess maybe we will wait until after this year to see if my husband can get comfortable enough and eliminate the ear problems before we buy anything, but we will start looking to see what we might like. Great suggestions from you all.
Along with agreeing with my friend, Ace; I would ask that snorkeling skills be added to the equation for both of you, as well. You can't be too strong, or too comfortable in the water.
Remember that many things can impact buoyancy at the end of a dive:
-Breathing heavily, when you're tired, can cause you to hold more air in your lungs. You'll need to breathe normally to control your swimming ascent.
-A thick wetsuit (or a new one) is more buoyant, especially near the surface.
Salt water is also more buoyant than fresh water. Be aware of this if you alternate types of water when you dive. Your weights may be different. (Personally, the fresh stuff tastes horrible...)
-Aluminum 80 tanks go from being negatively buoyant when full, to slightly positively buoyant when near empty. Papabears advice of taking a few extra pounds of weight is sound. So is using steel scuba tanks.
It also occurs to me that some people are actually trained to put air into their BC's every time they dive. Stop this right away. Wear weights based upon your body, your equipment, and depth to be dived. If you MUST add air sometime, make darn sure you know how to dump it all out.
If this sounds foreign to you, spend your next money on further education, and not more gear.
Neutral bouyancy is difficult enough for Instructors to master;
let alone teach. Be patient with yourself.
Lastly, a safe rate of ascent is 1 foot per second. This is not a guideline. What it is, is diving physics. Violate natural laws, and nature can be a mother...
Hi Tigerbeach, Actually we have now done more snorkeling than scuba diving, since it doesn't require the ears to be equalized. My husband is continuing to get more comfortable in the water. We knew about the fresh vs salt water differences and also full vs empty tanks. Since we are still renting equipment (BC, Regulator, tanks etc), I don't know if we have too much say in the type of tanks we use, but we have definitely decided that my husband will wear more weights. I am trying to get him to learn to breathe better and that is why we are planning to go toa quarry in Tenn for a weekend in late April to see if we can more practice just on our own. It will just take time and practice to get him more practice and we want some time where we are not trying to quickly follow a dive master, so that we can practice these skills. BTW, he had no ear problems in the pool at all, so this was a surprise when we went to the quarry in Ohio for our Open water skills test.
Thanks to all of you for your advice. I got very busy with my other main activity which is ice skating and wasn't on here from Feb till now. Feb - April is our main competition season. Anyway, my husband and I went to Nashville to practice in Martha's quarry and feel a little bit better. We both worked on neutral bouyancy, but we both had trouble with equalizing our ears. We both had slight colds so I figure that was the problem. Also, the weather was horrible (rainy and cold) but at least we were one week before the flooding.
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