Reasoning for corrugated hose length

[cerich]

Loosing your corrigated hose is a bad thing. We use Thomas and Betts ties with the Stainless Steel locking tab. Two on each end of the hose. These ties are expensive, but they are the best and most reliable. You can usually find them at Electrical wholesale house.

Tobin

Good idea, be warned however that on old/brittle and some cheap inflators you can crack the plastic if you over tighten with the Thomas and Betts ties.

 

[cool_hardware52]

Also I cannot imagine a situation in which you absolutely need to inflate both the BC and the drysuit simultaneously rather than a few second apart.

Me either. One then the other, not a big deal, at least for me. Light head goes on my right thumb, left hand is used for buoyancy and ears.

So why is it important to be able to clear the ears and inflate the wing at the same time or to inflate both the wing and drysuit simultaneously? Is this something the scooter divers here do a lot? Have you ever needed to do it? How big of an advantage do you find it to be?

In my experience scooters will actually reduce the need for simultaneous inflation of anything. When riding a scooter is very easy to either get very negative, or very positive and not realize it until you get off the trigger. Your forward motion will mask your buoyancy until you let off the trigger. You need to remember to add gas on a descent, but you have plenty of time to do it. Same deal on ascents, you need to vent, but knowing how much can be tricky, until you stop. I just keep track of changes in depth and guess at how much to add or vent so I don't have a huge problem when I get off the trigger.


Tobin

 

[Rick Inman]

But Rick don't you primarily vent out of your butt dump?

Yes, Ben. And I suggest you, too, blow it out your...ah,... butt dump.

 

[dsteding]

Now this is a proper DIR forum thread. Detail oriented, slightly geeky and just the way I like them.

Floater, thank you for posting such an appropriate question. Way better than a MOF/NMOF debate, or anything that teckadventurediver posts . . .

 

[Thalassamania]

DIR does not teach hands free ear clearing?

 

[Rick Inman]

DIR does not teach hands free ear clearing?

Thalassy,

I think GUE assumes you already know how to clear your ears before you take the DIR class. You must mean, does GUE advocate hand's free ear clearing? But do they "teach" ear clearing? I think not...

 

[TSandM]

Hands free ear clearing is anatomy dependent. I cannot do it. I wish I could (and I've tried all the described techniques I could find) because it would reduce task loading on descent a ton.

 

[*Floater*]

I read it differently. To me he's not saying that you necessarily need to do these things all simultaneously, to me he's saying "you don't let go of the inflator when scootering".

There's a bit of context to this too. If it's too long it's going to be in the way of the stages and/or be susceptible to damage by getting trapped between the stages. Also, somewhere else he says that he mostly dumps his BCD with the butt valve. That makes sense if you're carring a truck load of gear and diving in cramped spaces so I would assume that he doesn't see a need to hold it over the head for easy dumping.

R..

That makes more sense, but... First, people equalize when going down and that's when they also add gas to the wing, so I don't think venting the wing (via butt dump or otherwise) and equalizing around the same time would come into play here. Second, the hose should be short enough that it doesn't get in the way of the stages. Mine is right there on top of the D-ring. Also, I don't see why you'd need to hold onto it (even when scootering) since it's attached to the d-ring/keeper with a bungee loop. Mine is not going anywhere. However, I'm sure JJ had some specific situation in mind when he came up with this requirement for the corrugated hose length which I'd like to know. Admittedly it's a very geeky question. Maybe I'll find out for myself if I start to use scooters.

By the way, when JJ says clear the ears, I assume he means equalize the ears. But could he mean something else? Would there be some reason to blow gas into your ears in some situation during a dive... like clearing the mask by blowing gas into it and the water out of it?

 

[cerich]

what makes you say that JJ came up with the short inflator hose??? LOL

 

[Diver0001]

Also, I don't see why you'd need to hold onto it (even when scootering) since it's attached to the d-ring/keeper with a bungee loop.

You'd have to ask JJ this, of course, but to the best of my recollection, this manner of attaching the hose came into play after that book was written. If I'm not mistaken, at the time he was writing it, it was still common practice to attach the hose to the top of the shoulder webbing with a loop of bungee. In this configuration, it's not unthinkable that the hose could get swept behind your head while scootering.

I'm not saying that's necessarily what he had in mind but it's a possibility.

R..