MidOH
Contributor
Here's the scenario: Deep open water dive, to the outside of a shipwreck. Great Lakes or East Coast, maybe Carolina.
Boat rules: Advanced card, deep, redundant air. Diver must maintain enough air in each cylinder to go from bottom to surface comfortably, at all times. No side mount on this boat.
You choose back mounted doubles. You suck at valve drills. Too inflexible. Too big. Too narc'd. Whatever reason you want. You can do them, but it seems stupid in an emergency situation. So you choose to remove your isolator and plug your modular valves.
Discuss. (The indy doubles threads here, are a bit dated, and drift towards tech stuff, or vacation soft strap nonsense.) Some of what I've heard:
-If I lose a tank valve or freeflow a reg, I can get to the surface easy, without wasting time checking valves or diagnosing anything. Thumb dive, breath off of the leaky sides regulator, switch to the other.
No big deal.
-"But, but, you lose access to half your air." I don't need that air. I maintained plenty in my other tank. I can always carry more air by switching to hp120's, or slinging another bottle.
-"But you can't feather the bad cylinder." Again, don't need to.
"You're combining the downsides of backmount, with the downsides of sidemount." So?
-"You could leave the isolator in, and just dive with the valve closed." But I'm at risk of losing all my air to a valve failure. "So sling an Al40+, with your doubles. And maintain your valves better. Double redundancy > single redundancy." Not exactly ideal.
-[puffs out chest] "Just get more flexible. Go get beat with whips and chains in a GUE class. Dive manifold doubles, or dont dive back mount doubles at all. Switch to rebreather or a sidemount friendly boat."
-"Choptima rebreathers are smoking hot for a reason. " Combine with single tank or baby doubles. Solves these issues completely. Or get a backmounted tech rebreather, Fathom or Gue. "This is the future of anything deep, even outside of the tech realm."
Boat rules: Advanced card, deep, redundant air. Diver must maintain enough air in each cylinder to go from bottom to surface comfortably, at all times. No side mount on this boat.
You choose back mounted doubles. You suck at valve drills. Too inflexible. Too big. Too narc'd. Whatever reason you want. You can do them, but it seems stupid in an emergency situation. So you choose to remove your isolator and plug your modular valves.
Discuss. (The indy doubles threads here, are a bit dated, and drift towards tech stuff, or vacation soft strap nonsense.) Some of what I've heard:
-If I lose a tank valve or freeflow a reg, I can get to the surface easy, without wasting time checking valves or diagnosing anything. Thumb dive, breath off of the leaky sides regulator, switch to the other.
No big deal.
-"But, but, you lose access to half your air." I don't need that air. I maintained plenty in my other tank. I can always carry more air by switching to hp120's, or slinging another bottle.
-"But you can't feather the bad cylinder." Again, don't need to.
"You're combining the downsides of backmount, with the downsides of sidemount." So?
-"You could leave the isolator in, and just dive with the valve closed." But I'm at risk of losing all my air to a valve failure. "So sling an Al40+, with your doubles. And maintain your valves better. Double redundancy > single redundancy." Not exactly ideal.
-[puffs out chest] "Just get more flexible. Go get beat with whips and chains in a GUE class. Dive manifold doubles, or dont dive back mount doubles at all. Switch to rebreather or a sidemount friendly boat."
-"Choptima rebreathers are smoking hot for a reason. " Combine with single tank or baby doubles. Solves these issues completely. Or get a backmounted tech rebreather, Fathom or Gue. "This is the future of anything deep, even outside of the tech realm."
