Spare Air Question
- Thread starter Atticus
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
- Messages
- 592
- Reaction score
- 3
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
dlent:
and the odds that you AND your buddy will have identical malfunctions at the exact same time????
again, SpareAir = waste of money and false sense of security.
Tassie_Rohan
Contributor
dlent:
Check your air regularly. After you have been diving for a while you'll develop a keen sense of what your air pressure should be even before looking at the gauge – so a stuck needle will be noticed.
Is a struck needle the sort of catastrophic spg failure you meant? If the hose has somehow come loose/blown a ring and blowing air then you and your buddy are going to notice more then an incorrect reading: however there will still be enough air in the tank to notify your buddy and accend.
Cheers,
Rohan.
i'm just being devil's advocate, but let me get this picture straight....
so HALTHRON does 3 hour dives out of his personal boat in 40' of water, but since he never stops looking at his SPG he has AMPHIBIOUS (always stays close to his buddy) riding on top of his doubles to be his seeing eye dog?
please gents, take this with tongue-in-cheek as it's meant to be, i'm just poking a little fun at ya, but PISS POOR DIVING SKILLS for not being 'next' to your buddy? try to see if that one flies with the PHOTOGRAPHERS and VIDEOGRAPHERS and SPEARFISHERMAN out there..... welcome to the real world.
i'm still not convinced that an item (if and when mr. murphy comes to call or the proverbial poop DOES hit the fan) that will give you that few 'precious' gulps of air is a waste of time and money. i wont' say there aren't better ways to address an issue, but there's certainly nothing wrong with having a PLAN-"B" - Just-In-Case. my spareAir is a piece of equipment that i treat like the rest of my dive equipment... like my life depends on it.... it's tested with a few breaths before every dive trip (just like my octo) and then i make sure it's full... it gets maintained as regularily as my main reg....
so HALTHRON does 3 hour dives out of his personal boat in 40' of water, but since he never stops looking at his SPG he has AMPHIBIOUS (always stays close to his buddy) riding on top of his doubles to be his seeing eye dog?
please gents, take this with tongue-in-cheek as it's meant to be, i'm just poking a little fun at ya, but PISS POOR DIVING SKILLS for not being 'next' to your buddy? try to see if that one flies with the PHOTOGRAPHERS and VIDEOGRAPHERS and SPEARFISHERMAN out there..... welcome to the real world.
i'm still not convinced that an item (if and when mr. murphy comes to call or the proverbial poop DOES hit the fan) that will give you that few 'precious' gulps of air is a waste of time and money. i wont' say there aren't better ways to address an issue, but there's certainly nothing wrong with having a PLAN-"B" - Just-In-Case. my spareAir is a piece of equipment that i treat like the rest of my dive equipment... like my life depends on it.... it's tested with a few breaths before every dive trip (just like my octo) and then i make sure it's full... it gets maintained as regularily as my main reg....
- Messages
- 592
- Reaction score
- 3
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
so you only pack your spare air 40' and shallower? I show up for every scuba dive, dressed for my maximums. if I'm solo this is 115ft. a 3cu.ft. bailout is not enought to get me safely to the surface, with a safety stop in the event of a primary gas failure.
for this I pack a AL30 bailout, hung like a stage. more then enough, but in my experience having "to much air" has never been a problem.
so back to this 40' dive, and "The Real World". in the age of dive computers and planning on the fly, how often (excluding a hard bottom) does a 40' dive stay a 40' dive? Photographers and spearos are often "exploring" deeper to find their quarry. so why pack a reduncacy device that will limit you ? as for the blind SPG reader: I have NEVER, NOT ONCE, run out of air because I used up my supply. I check my SPG every 5mins or so out of habbit, and never needed a seeing-eye-diver (but that's a funny one!). if your tank is leaking to the point that I would bleed it dry in this 5min gap, I would hear it, or my buddy would notice that huge pillar fo foamy water extending above his/her dive buddy
checking your SPG frequently is just good diving skills. go read the "Dive acident Forum". 99% of every accident in there (and all the ones that I know of) comes back to HUMAN ERROR. equipment malfunctions that are actually the equipments fault are very rare.
for a solo diver there are FAR better options then spreair. for the buddy diver it's inadequate redundacy on redundancy.
if you keep getting in car accidents, do you just buy more insurance? or do you fix the way you drive?
for this I pack a AL30 bailout, hung like a stage. more then enough, but in my experience having "to much air" has never been a problem.
so back to this 40' dive, and "The Real World". in the age of dive computers and planning on the fly, how often (excluding a hard bottom) does a 40' dive stay a 40' dive? Photographers and spearos are often "exploring" deeper to find their quarry. so why pack a reduncacy device that will limit you ? as for the blind SPG reader: I have NEVER, NOT ONCE, run out of air because I used up my supply. I check my SPG every 5mins or so out of habbit, and never needed a seeing-eye-diver (but that's a funny one!). if your tank is leaking to the point that I would bleed it dry in this 5min gap, I would hear it, or my buddy would notice that huge pillar fo foamy water extending above his/her dive buddy
checking your SPG frequently is just good diving skills. go read the "Dive acident Forum". 99% of every accident in there (and all the ones that I know of) comes back to HUMAN ERROR. equipment malfunctions that are actually the equipments fault are very rare.
for a solo diver there are FAR better options then spreair. for the buddy diver it's inadequate redundacy on redundancy.
if you keep getting in car accidents, do you just buy more insurance? or do you fix the way you drive?
Halthron:
Absolutely right.
There's the other essential piece of equipment we should all dive with regardless of the planned depth, and that's a watch. The big grey colored primary dive computer lodged firmly within your skull knows quite well that your cylinder, like your car's gas tank, won't register full indefinitely.
Atticus:
Hey Merlin, I just wonder how two uncertified divers bought Spare Air's. Every shop I have been in requires a c card to buy life support equipment. We never let students use Spare Air's nor Pony bottles in a OW class. They have enough going on.
Charles
Actually my Xwife bought me one years ago and she wasn't certified.Aquanautchuck:
As someone else mentioned after a while you should be able to guess what your pressure is at any point of the dive and be within 50 so psi. With a buddy you dive with on a regular basis, you should be able to do likewise.
On a recent dive, my buddy and I surfaced after a 70+ minute dive and I ventured a guess as to his pressure. I was right on the mark and I never looked at his spg.
Similar threads
