chrpai
Contributor
A 40 clipped on my left is neither heavy or cumbersome. After several hundred dives without drama? Um, I've seen your videos.
What pony size?
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A 40 clipped on my left is neither heavy or cumbersome. After several hundred dives without drama? Um, I've seen your videos.
I'm new around here but I do find these pony bottle threads interesting. A couple questions
Why is that in all the consumption calculations it is assumed that it takes a minute or two to figure out you're in deep poop? I would think it would take about 2 seconds and one breath off your redundant air source to figure out you're in trouble.
Is everyone that dives with a redundant air source, diving solo? Don't you really just need enough air to get to your buddy which might be at most 25' to 50' away and hopefully will be a little closer than that?
I guess I am just envisioning diving a 100' wreck with a buddy. For whatever reason, I take a breath and nothing happens. I think to myself "OH %$#@!!!". I reach down unclip my reg from my XX size pony bottle and take a breath. Immediately look around for my buddy and start swimming towards them while trying to get their attention and giving them the out of air signal. Within 30 - 60 seconds I am with my buddy. I grab his/her SPG and see how they are doing on air. Look for the ascent line and depending on how much air my buddy has we either immediately start ascending together or make our way to the line. At some point I would switch to using their octo. Maybe while we are doing our safety stop, we can try figure out what happened to my reg.
Other than the part of using the redundant air source, isn't that what every diver is trained to do and isn't that why we dive with a buddy? (solo/self-reliant diving is another topic) So even a 6 cuft bottle at 100' would give me a full minute to get me to my buddy.
Just my 2 cents and this might help someone in choosing a redundant air source/size SGR SPECIAL REPORT: Redundant Air Systems
Why is that in all the consumption calculations it is assumed that it takes a minute or two to figure out you're in deep poop? I would think it would take about 2 seconds and one breath off your redundant air source to figure out you're in trouble.
Is everyone that dives with a redundant air source, diving solo? Don't you really just need enough air to get to your buddy which might be at most 25' to 50' away and hopefully will be a little closer than that?
I guess I am just envisioning diving a 100' wreck with a buddy. For whatever reason, I take a breath and nothing happens. I think to myself "OH %$#@!!!". I reach down unclip my reg from my XX size pony bottle and take a breath. Immediately look around for my buddy and start swimming towards them while trying to get their attention and giving them the out of air signal. Within 30 - 60 seconds I am with my buddy. I grab his/her SPG and see how they are doing on air. Look for the ascent line and depending on how much air my buddy has we either immediately start ascending together or make our way to the line. At some point I would switch to using their octo. Maybe while we are doing our safety stop, we can try figure out what happened to my reg.
Other than the part of using the redundant air source, isn't that what every diver is trained to do and isn't that why we dive with a buddy? (solo/self-reliant diving is another topic) So even a 6 cuft bottle at 100' would give me a full minute to get me to my buddy.
Just my 2 cents and this might help someone in choosing a redundant air source/size SGR SPECIAL REPORT: Redundant Air Systems
I think you are on a bit of a slippery slope. Following this logic, one might also assume that after doing a few (or several) hundred decompression dives and never getting bent, you might begin to view those long deco stops as a pain in the ass and soon you are shaving minutes off your planned deco stops.
Panama Jones
Contributor
I think that the 1 to 2 minutes (at least in my quote) was to account for conservativeness in how long your redundant air supply should last. I also used a 30 fpm ascent for conservativeness only where someone correctly pointed out that he would go to 60ft as fast as possible then nomal from there.
Back to the 1 or 2 minutes to figure things out, I think most people that use this are only thinking a technical problem that affects air supply and not another emergency. If by any chance you are actually clean out of air, in other words you take breath and nothing happens, you are probablyly looking at high stress if you are not getting air 15 to 30 second. I don't know because that has never happend to me. However, in other OOA situations where the failure means you are blowing air into your mouth or the water (I have had), I think most divers will take some time to do some problem review or resolution because they are not in a stress situation hence the 1 to 2 minutes (2 is a longtime to try resolution I think). I don't know if other divers consider tech failures result in LOA/OOA as high stress or emergency situations so they can weigh in a feel free to disagree.
1-2 minutes seem a fair allocation to get the plan in action - Valve shut down?, getting "stable"..., and enacting the exit (are you rigging an up line? are you swimming back to a mooring line? are you shooting a bag/smb?) all takes some time to execute. My last choice in an exit strategy is a free ascent from depths I'm usually diving.....
I'll set aside time in my evaluation of gas to cover this.....
I'll set aside time in my evaluation of gas to cover this.....
R
redacted
Guest
What DD did not mention is that he does some fairly deep free-diving so he probably know he can make the surface even from 70 to 100 feet. I carry a pony when solo over about 40 feet but consider the surface as my redundant gas above that. A pony at shallower depths is more a nice to have rather than a must have thing. That probably makes a difference as to whether it is perceived as heavy and cumbersome.
yeah, I think DD has gills.....
GrumpyOldGuy
Contributor
If you are using a "small" pony, your only plan on an OOG is ascend now. If your buddy is close and in contact, of course you can swim to him but that is not something a self reliant diver counts on.
if valve shutdown, solving other issues or getting "stable" is needed because you have not drilled with your pony, then you need a BIG pony.
It's a mindset, if we are talking OW you always have a direct path to the surface, using the small pony limits you options but is less of a hassle. The big pony gives you more options, but at a cost in dealing with another big piece of gear. (Yeah its light underwater, its still a big piece of gear).
We have the same issue with guns (another fun topic). Whenever you starting talking about what size is big enough, someone will top you and say you need a bigger size. Does not matter where you start, someone will cite some incident where a drug crazed zombie was only stopped with a .50cal to the brain box. The truth of course is 99% of the time you don't need a gun. The 99% of the time you need a gun, any reasonable size will do. Now we are getting all worked up on solving the 1% of the 1% of the issues, while still doing stupid things like not monitoring gas, not planning dives or maintaining gear.
---------- Post added August 16th, 2013 at 11:10 AM ----------
I came to the same conclusion. Hiking up to the car after a beach dive with full cold water dive gear on really makes you consider how much weight you want to dive with. Thus the pony often stays home when I beach dive and know my max depth is shallow. When I do dive with one of my pony's, I choose the tank based on the conditions. Diving a oil rig with no real bottom would drive me to choose larger tank than hitting the local spring with a 84' bottom.
Panama Jones
Contributor
Warning: Under no circumstances ever mistake a .50cal for your pony when gearing up to dive
Thats why I use a .58 (BP, but "big medicine"...:cool2
FWIW - Never needed it (my pony), and never finished a dive with under 300 psi in the tank (and the 99% line you draw would likely be 700 psi). I don't think a 30 is a big tank at all....... a 40 gets a bit large for my preferences...
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