nikyyo once bubbled...
I will be going to LP to buy a pony bottle this week and would appreciate some input from the board as far as how big, the bracket to use and first stage and second stage reg. Will any reg do? I have a SP mk25/s600 as a primary now and an r380 for an octo. Also< i'm unclear as to how I will be able to read the psi on the pony since it will be mounted on my back. How does that work? I'm thinking about a 19 cu bottle. Would there be any problems getting that on to a plane do ya think? I've read that some peple have the hose wraped around the pony. I don't understand that as how do they access the bottle when it is stapped to your main tank...I must be missing something. Thanks.
Hi. I used a pony bottle for a few months, and went through a variety of mounting options. The best one, without fail, was the stage bottle style. You can do this yourself with a hose clamp and a bolt snap, and you'll find instructions for that on a couple of different sites such the
www.wkpp.org site. You'll need a couple of D-rings to attach the bottle to your BC, I just used zip ties to attach a D-ring to the left strap and to a hose holder on my left hip.
I used a 14 chft bottle, and I used it as bailout only. I would breathe it on many dives, not because I needed it but because in an emergency you need to be able to do something without having to figure it out for the first time. It will also tell you if you have enough gas. My SOP was that on a dive where I had plenty of gas left I would switch to the stage (pony) just prior to the final ascent.
I used some surgical tubing to hold the regulator in place. I was very careful to do it in such a way that simply tugging on the second stage would deploy the regulator.
Any good regulator will do. It doesn't matter. Just turn the adjustment screw all the way down. At the beginning of the dive the regulator should be charged, and then the bottle should be turned off so that you don't loose your gas.
No offense, but mounting a pony on your back makes no sense whatsoever. You can't get to the valve, and it's an entanglement hazard.
I stopped using a Pony because I realized that any dive where a pony is needed is really a dive for doubles.
Doubles have a lot of advantages over two single tanks...for example, if you leave 1/4 of your gas in your first tank, this gas is now useless for your second dive. With doubles that gas is still in your tanks, and you can avail yourself of it for the next dive.
-Paul B.