How to rig a pony bottle?

[doctormike]

Every time I splash I have the mind set that it's a solo dive whether I'm alone or not.

Hah! I would be happy to solo dive with you any day! I'm a photographer, we make the BEST solo buddies.

 

[shurite7]

Here is a nice video on how to rig a deco (sling pony) bottle.

 

[CuzzA]

Hah! I would be happy to solo dive with you any day! I'm a photographer, we make the BEST solo buddies.

I'm down. I can shoot fish and you can take pictures of the sharks trying to eat me. My dive videos suck. Lol

There's definitely a lot of truth to your statement, "We make the best solo buddies." I know my buddy is over there in that direction... I'm going to catch this fish and check on him when I'm done. I imagine that's pretty much the same for photography. If he needs me I'll come to his aid, but I know he can handle his own and I can handle my own.

In OWC we are left with this impression that your buddy will always be within arms reach to help you out... Yeah, not so much. Maybe for some, but it's remarkably easy to lose sight of your buddy. He could be above you and you both are doing a pirouette wondering where each other are.

Here's an example of that exact thing last week while SOLO buddy diving. At times we were separated and then on another dive I played the roll of shark look out as my other partner was shooting. I didn't get the best shots of the sharks except for one at the end of the video that tried to eat me when I surfaced. I'm pretty sure my Shark Shield is what sent him back down. Holy hell were the first 3 sharks huge. That was my first shark encounter at depth. They kept playing peakaboo just at the distance of visibility. On the final dive they started darting around and we decided we overstayed our welcome.

I apologize for the poor and long video edit. I'm still working on my GoPro camera angle. You have to watch on YouTube and click on the HD gear to get a decent view of the sharks.

Anyway, I think this is a perfect example of the type of diving where a pony would be advantageous. Guess where my pony was though on this day?

 

[barth]

We were all taught how to switch regs underwater since OW. If a diver can not switch regs they shouldn't be diving. The skill required to carry a pony bottle is minimal, the fact the op is continuing to dive under the watch of an instructor right now would be the best opportunity for him to learn this new skill. Most people self teach carrying a pony.

I think it is more taskloading. If it's rigged like a stage you should open the valve and deploy the hose. If the valve open during the dive you should check the spg during the dive.

Sorry, while OOG and buddy separation are both potentially "awareness" issues, they are not the same thing. I don't know about you, but I have had occasional buddy separation episodes. It happens, and I am a firm believer in each diver being self reliant. Despite many prominent divers teaching otherwise, I personally don't believe that anyone's life should depend on the buddy system.

Ok, you need a pony tank because:


situation 1:
-If you have a failure and lose all your gass
- your awareness was not good and you lost your buddy
- your buddy his awareness was not good and he lost you

situation 2
- you lose all you gas
- you buddy had a poor gas planning and have not left enough gas for both of you or your buddy didn't watch his spg and have not enough gas for you both


I don't think it would be good the buy just a pony tank for this situations. Losing you buddy is both your responsibility. You should watch each other and if you buddy is getting to far away you should communicate that he should be near you. If this happens too much, just don't dive with that buddy anymore.

If you buddy his gasplanning is not ok, than say this before the dive starts.
If you want to know how much gas is left in you buddy his tank just ask him or her underwater.
If you don't like things happen during the dive, just thumb and end the dive.

My life depend of the buddy system if you like this or not.

- When I do a gasswitch and make a mistake and want to switch to the wrong gas, my buddy should stop this. If he doensn't do this it can kill me.
- In a cave when I make a mistaken when navigation, my buddy should let me stop and tell me that I make a mistake. It doesn't matter how much pony tanks I have, if I get lost I can use all my gas before I will be at the exit.
- When entangled in a (fishing)line it can be possible that you buddy have to help you because you can't solve it by your own.

You can buy extra gear for simple openwaterdiving, in a few cases it can solve the problem. But when dives are getting more advanced you should be a good buddy and dive with a good buddy. Otherwise a single mistake or a single failure of one person can just kill you if you do a solo dive or if you have a buddy who is doing things wrong.

I think it is ok if people decide to do solo diving. They now the risk and accept that, there is nothing wrong with that. But most of the people who lost there buddy or are solodiving or are using pony tanks who are telling you to use a pony tank are not safe or good divers self. It is harder to agree with that for them than telling it is not safe to use the buddysystem.

For me it is also hard to find buddy’s for deep diving and cave diving. There are much more people I want to do rec openwater diving than tech/cave diving. If it is possible for me only doing deep and caves dives with buddy’s I trust than it would also be possible for almost everybody to do rec diving with people they trust. And if you don’t trust you buddy just change the plan and do a easier dive. Or just don’t dive.

But a single mistake of just one person or a single failure shouldn't be a reason to use a pony tank.... If you really need a pony tank a lot of things were wrong....

Despite drills and training you really never know how a buddy will react in a real emergency and that is usually not a good time to find out.

When my buddy give me an out of air signal during a dive I don’t know if it is training or real. It doesn’t matter for me. You can just try it during the dive if you want to know how he or she response.

 

[CuzzA]

most of the people who lost there buddy or are solodiving or are using pony tanks who are telling you to use a pony tank are not safe or good divers self.

That's a bunch of BS. Again with your blanket condemnations. I know guys who are great divers, 1,000+ dives, that have skills many would only hope to achieve in a lifetime of diving and they sometimes solo dive and often carry a redundant gas supply. Know why they carry it? Because they've dove enough (and posted less) to have experienced the real life gas loss failures, not just speculate or talk about them. Are they bad or unsafe divers? Hell no!

To steal an acronym from NetDoc, You are FIGJAM'ing this thread. And apparently you didn't read @grf88's post. Your posts are the perfect example of what he wrote, I'll quote it again in case you missed it.

Fortunately, we still have the freedom to choose how we dive and the gear we want to use. If it were up to some, they'd have everyone in strict configurations, with only message board warrior approved gear.

I wrote the following during a particularly contentious pony bottle discussion on another board about 12 years ago and subsequently posted it here about 9 years ago during a similar discussion. Some of it is a comparison between tech diving and rec diving and not all of it is applicable to this thread but much of it is.

"At this point I would like to state that I wholeheartedly agree that when it comes to technical diving then the Team Approach is the only safe way. In those dives any problems have to be solved at depth and unless you have an integrated team who have worked and trained together there can be disastrous results. Ideally we would like to have the same situation in recreational diving but that is frankly being unrealistic. Let's compare the two groups. Most divers who go on to technical diving are addicted to diving in one way or another. They eat, sleep and live diving, spend the money on equipment and training and also spend a considerable amount of their spare time diving and developing their skills. Most recreational divers get certified and maybe take an extra few courses so they can dive when they are away on vacation and maybe also do a little bit of local diving during the summer. They are not part of a Diving Team and even if they have a regular buddy it is still not Team Diving as GUE would define. Unlike the Technical Divers they do not go away on Dive Team trips but go on vacation with their families where they may take a charter or two to get in some diving. I am not sure how many dives a year would be average for this group but it is probably less than 20.

So what happens when members of this group raise the issue of ponys as a redundant air source. Normally a member of the technical diving community will advise them not to substitute equipment for skill, or some such statement, and tell them that you should rely on your buddy for your redundant air source. This is often the same individual who on a different thread is lamenting the present quality of training and the poor diving and buddy skills that recreational divers exhibit. That's right, although he does not 'think they are safe at any depth, he is quite prepared to tell you to trust those same divers with your life. When you point this out you are advised that you should only dive with buddies that you can rely on. This is sound advice but it is not always practical if you want to take a day charter while on vacation or if you are even going with your local club where there may be some newer divers with limited experience. Yes the technical divers will travel with their team, diving after all is often the reason and almost the entire focus of the trip.

So as a recreational diver on vacation you can, well! what can you do if you listen to this advice? probably play golf. If on the other hand you would like to dive and have a concern that you may be faced with a situation of diving with an unknown buddy whose skill set and response in an emergency are also unknown then you may want to make yourself a little more self-sufficient when it comes to the one thing we really need when diving which is air. Oh no! protest the pony detractors, look at all the complexity and task loading you are adding to your dive, you are diving an unbalanced rig, think of the extra weight swing from the extra air etc. These the same divers that regularly have 4 different regulators some delivering gas that could kill them if used at the improper depth. No they say, you are adding too much complexity, what if the gas you have in your pony is not suitable for the depth you are at. It's a pony tank guys, we fill them with air, yes that stuff you use for tires, believe it or not it is not toxic and can support life at all recreational depths. It will take someone about 2 minute to learn to how to deploy a side slung pony and probably less than 30 seconds to actually do it even under duress. Guys, to suggest that most recreational divers do not somehow have the capacity to do this is frankly insulting. Oh yes, there are a few that may not have the competence to do this and other things, these are the guys we are trying to protect ourselves from when we get inadvertently buddied up with them

OK now that you have your pony these same guys are going to look down their noses and suggest you are obviously incapable of gas management and are a dangerous diver because now you have the pony you obviously are going to use that emergency gas to extend your dive or push the limits etc. etc., after all if you knew what you were doing you would do it their way because doing it any other way is wrong. I do not know how many divers there are but I am confident that these same Technical Divers do not represent ten percent of the diving community and it is probably closer to one percent than the ten. Their ideas, methods and discipline are critical in the diving they are doing but it does not mean that recreational divers need to follow these very same methods. You may not want to tell them that though because they do sometimes get a little upset.

Well I have talked about a common reason to have a pony for those times that you are diving with an unknown buddy on a vacation for example. Why else might they be a good idea. Why might I want one when I am diving with my regular buddy who has always been reliable and stayed close. An example might be that your reliable buddy who you have practiced emergency drills with turns out to be an absolute hoover when the sh!t hits the fan and what would normally be an adequate reserve is diminished quickly. Much better to have the extra gas than be forced into a hurried ascent. Another consideration in our lakes diving is that freeflows are not unknown and for some people are quite common. If the conditions are conducive to freeflows you may just tip your buddies reg over the brink when both of you breathe from it, a redundant air supply can avoid this."

 

[CuzzA]

I think it is more taskloading. If it's rigged like a stage you should open the valve and deploy the hose. If the valve open during the dive you should check the spg during the dive.

Task loading? Before you dive you clip the bottle to your harness like you would any piece of gear you may be carrying, open the valve, check the SPG. Same thing you do with your primary gas supply. Then dive. The gas in the pony is not part of your gas plan. So you completely ignore it during the dive, except for maybe checking for a free flow occasionally, which if it's slung you would likely notice a free flow. If you had a catastrophic loss of gas and your buddy wasn't close enough or you weren't able to reach them, for example, a strong current, you do what you were taught in OW, grab the reg from the golden triangle, purge the water and breath! Tell your buddy you're ending the dive and safely ascend.

How is that anymore of task loading than grabbing your octo or a buddy's octo, as they teach in OWC? The idea that carrying a pony is task loading or too much for a diver is nonsense, IMO. If you can't handle the aforementioned procedure, you shouldn't be diving at all.

 

[Diving Dubai]

Perhaps I should add some fuel to the fire by saying that my redundant air is both a Pony and a Stage and can be used to extend the dive if necessary or used as an independent redundant supply. I will admit I know the rock bottom values for a given depth.. but someone here will still get bent out of shape.

If we followed our friends simplistic method, we wouldn't carry an alternate reg, we'd just swim over to our buddy and air share to the surface...

Oh wasn't how they originally did it back in the old days, before they decided that having an Alternate was a better solution? Or was it an evil conspiracy by manufacturers to sell more regs or worse still, an equipment solution to a skills problem [/sarcasm]

 

[CuzzA]

Perhaps I should add some fuel to the fire by saying that my redundant air is both a Pony and a Stage and can be used to extend the dive if necessary or used as an independent redundant supply. I will admit I know the rock bottom values for a given depth.. but someone here will still get bent out of shape.

If we followed our friends simplistic method, we wouldn't carry an alternate reg, we'd just swim over to our buddy and air share to the surface...

Oh wasn't how they originally did it back in the old days, before they decided that having an Alternate was a better solution? Or was it an evil conspiracy by manufacturers to sell more regs or worse still, an equipment solution to a skills problem [/sarcasm]

You're a bad diver and are going to DIE!!!

 

[doctormike]

My life depend of the buddy system if you like this or not.

- When I do a gasswitch and make a mistake and want to switch to the wrong gas, my buddy should stop this. If he doensn't do this it can kill me.
- In a cave when I make a mistaken when navigation, my buddy should let me stop and tell me that I make a mistake. It doesn't matter how much pony tanks I have, if I get lost I can use all my gas before I will be at the exit.
- When entangled in a (fishing)line it can be possible that you buddy have to help you because you can't solve it by your own.

I don't understand.

By your logic, aren't you depending on the buddy system to make up for poor skills or awareness on your part? Wouldn't it be better to analyze your deco gas and check it before a switch? Wouldn't it be better to follow a line in an overhead situation and not make a navigation error? Wouldn't it be better to carry two cutting devices that were easily accessible in case of fishing line entanglement?

It seems that you are criticizing a pony bottle because it's a crutch for poor diving practices, but praising the buddy system for the same reason...

 

[doctormike]

When my buddy give me an out of air signal during a dive I don’t know if it is training or real. It doesn’t matter for me. You can just try it during the dive if you want to know how he or she response.

Here's a rule of thumb to tell the difference. If someone actually gives you the out of air signal, it's training. If someone is actually out of air, they will take your regulator.

And the response will be very different in those two different situations.