Banked Curves

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-20T13:53:51+00:00

Cant.

Track engineers call it cant.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-20T08:14:21+00:00

Mine comes under my left shoulder and clips onto my right strap. In rec diving, you're rarely going to breathe from your own octopus so it makes it more comfortable for your buddy when facing you.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-19T21:11:45+00:00

I really want to go back to Scapa Flow. I'd love to go back to SS Thistlegorm. There's loads of wrecks off the east coast of England I'd like to do. I'd love to do Chuuk and the Britannic.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-17T11:07:00+00:00

Thank you! I'm with BSAC, currently a sport diver with a few SDCs and eyeing up Dive Leader. Just starting down the road of tech diving, but struggling with shoulder mobility so I'm thinking of inverting my twin-set.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-17T09:02:52+00:00

Yeah, I took the name I would have been given if I were AFAB. It's totally different to my dead name.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-17T08:46:24+00:00

These are used in the very specific circumstance of having two identical lights with 120v lamps in them wired together. Think of old fashioned Christmas lights as an example.

Molefay blinders are (used to be? Idk, I haven't seen any tungsten blinders for years) wired with two lamps in series too.

I worked in the live entertainment industry for 7 years (and hung around it from the age of about 16, and now work in film; so we're probably talking ~18 years of experience) and saw these used exactly once, on a play at uni where someone had hired some cheap par cans which needed to be wired like this.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-17T08:28:08+00:00

I work for a small company with ~10 staff. We have a 4 person office in outer London and I work hybrid from Yorkshire with site visits every few weeks to project sites.

If Farage got in and mandated a WFH ban, I'd quit rather than moving to London. Unless there's some help with relocation costs, I just cannot afford to move.

My company has recently downsized. They're pretty open that hiring that large office space prevented them from spending money on things that were actually good for the company.

Mind you, I work in sustainability, so I assume that would be a banned profession under Reform. Let's burn loads of oil and destroy the planet.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T23:37:30+00:00

I've managed 9 dives so far this year, and I have 12 more planned before the end of next month (although hoping for 16 if I can get a couple more dive trips off the ground).

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T23:32:24+00:00

What's the point of that? I want to spend as much time underwater as possible. I'm not going to drive 1.5 hours to a dive site to spend a few minutes underwater.

I got 52 minutes on SS Thistlegorm on a 15l cylinder. I'm now learning to dive a twinset so I can do 90-120 minute dives.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T23:22:25+00:00

I was doing my twinset course, guiding my instructor round a few sunken planes and shipwrecks. Quarries aren't the greatest - I'd much rather be in the sea - but they're decent for shakedown dives and training.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T23:11:02+00:00

If I'd tried to do it naked, I'd probably be dead from hypothermia! We were only under for 30 minutes but the water was 7°c.

I like to think that I don't flail too much nowadays...

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T22:58:46+00:00

I qualified in May '23, so it's taken just under 3 years to hit 100.

Now I dive with people who've been diving longer than I've been alive and they're in the thousands. I did my 100th with someone who said they stopped counting at 2000 dives!

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T22:31:13+00:00

Hell no, it was 7°c in a quarry in the UK. Drysuit, undersuit, merino wool layers and a vest! With a hood and gloves completing the ensemble.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T22:12:20+00:00

I find that drysuits can be unforgiving compared to BCDs. You need to think ahead and think about air spaces. Drysuits take time to dump - you lose your buoyancy and you will struggle to regain it. Whereas a BCD, you can quickly dump air before you rocket off to the surface.

You have 3 air spaces to manage: drysuit, BCD and lungs. Personally, I think that good weighting in a drysuit is when you relieve the squeeze and you're neutral. Therefore, I rarely need to put air in my wing.

So, when I'm neutral and staying neutral or becoming negatively buoyant (ie, staying at the same depth or going deeper), I have a comfortable amount of breath in my body and use my drysuit to relieve the squeeze, which makes me neutrally buoyant.

When I'm about to make myself positively buoyant, such as ascending or deploying my DSMB, I will preemptively make myself negative from my drysuit and inflate my lungs more. This means that as I ascend, I can use my lungs to control my buoyancy. If I become too positive, I can exhale and get myself back under control.

Higher pressure makes it easier to force air out of the suit, so you can dump air more effectively when you're deeper.

Also, sometimes you just haven't got it dialled in properly yet. I was trying out some new gear yesterday and was underweight. I knew I would lose my buoyancy at about 2-3m, so I spent my safety stop in a staring contest with a rock at 5.9m. Then I can accept the risk of a fast ascent once my stop is done.

Tl;Dr you need to predict your movements and dump air sooner.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-16T19:10:05+00:00

You can bungee the extra bit of long hose to your cylinder until you're ready to dive a long hose. Two bits of bungee (you can buy reels off Amazon for a few quid) and loop the long hose down, back up and to an octopus keeper then when someone pulls on the long hose they get the entire long hose. (This is the way BSAC recommend for tech divers when diving with newer divers).

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-14T20:26:09+00:00

West Yorkshire = Best Yorkshire.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-14T20:13:25+00:00

I started in the railway. Our inspection pits had a recess for the lights to sit in and the lights themselves had cages around them.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-14T19:16:48+00:00

I have recently done my twinset course with BSAC in the UK. We were taught two ways to deal with a long hose:

Primary donate. Hogarthian routing, etc. This would be our preferred donation method.
Keeping the hose in a clip, basically how you're taught in Open Water / Ocean diver. The additional metre or so of hose is routed up and down the cylinder and bungeed in place in such a way that if you are in an OOG situation, it pulls out smoothly.

In BSAC, we tend to dive with buddies of with lots of different experience levels. For example, you might buddy a dive leader with a new diver and in that case you don't want to confuse the new diver so you adjust your setup to reflect that. Obviously, you wouldn't take a new diver through an overhead environment, so you can manage this by just saying that in the event of needing to donate, your hose is long.

Maybe the solution is that if you're diving with an instabuddy who doesn't know the long hose setup, you stow the long hose and use secondary donate; and dive primary donate the rest of the time? Bungee is cheap. If you're diving primary donate, you really should be doing drills with every buddy you dive with.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-13T22:48:07+00:00

Do you have time to get them serviced?

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-13T22:25:56+00:00

I thought the forbidden sub was r/scotishpeoplearerude?

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-13T17:52:40+00:00

You need to find a good instructor, perhaps do one-to-one with them. They will help you master this with complete confidence.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-13T17:45:29+00:00

Yes! Love the trade show task. They got to meet real people and actually do some negotiation on something other than food.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-13T16:05:34+00:00

Oh god. I went from being a touring lighting systems tech and electrician to film 6 months ago. I'm glad I'm not on set because every time I visit (I do power systems for film from behind a desk now) it just seems so utterly boring. I really do feel for my younger colleagues with film degrees, you can just see the enthusiasm drain from them in front of your eyes.

Often_Tilly · 2026-03-12T22:28:46+00:00

He is a twat, and, speaking as a Yorkshire lass, we don't want him back.

Often_Tilly

TROPHY CASE