A Case for Spare Air

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I saw Caruso's comment, but do not agree that, for a solo diver (or any diver), a pony should be part of gas planning by letting you deplete your reserve. Use your primary cylinder for gas planning--the pony is only for an emergency, so do a gas plan as if it will never be used..

Yeah, I've gotten responses like this before, all the way up to "if you draw your main tank reserve lower than you otherwise would because you've got a full 19cf pony bottle you're going to die, it's only a matter of time". Meanwhile, no one ever says why other than that's what they think.
 
Yeah, I've gotten responses like this before, all the way up to "if you draw your main tank reserve lower than you otherwise would because you've got a full 19cf pony bottle you're going to die, it's only a matter of time". Meanwhile, no one ever says why other than that's what they think.
I agree with you, however my Spare Air doesn't have any affect on my gas planning. It is for a time when everything goes South and I have to get out of Dodge. I don't believe I will ever need to use it.
 
I agree with you, however my Spare Air doesn't have any affect on my gas planning. It is for a time when everything goes South and I have to get out of Dodge .

Sure, a Spare Air doesn't hold anywhere near enough gas to be considered a reserve.
 
Yeah, I've gotten responses like this before, all the way up to "if you draw your main tank reserve lower than you otherwise would because you've got a full 19cf pony bottle you're going to die, it's only a matter of time". Meanwhile, no one ever says why other than that's what they think.

Kinda like if you start a thread discussing Air2's.

:gas:
 
You can't practice anything by creating a real emergency ( well, I guess you can...).

I was trained back when some of the training is now considered hazing, and if not done properly, and the student trained properly prior, I would agree. The result was dealing with a real OOA and other casualties, and although it was a controlled situation, your initial body reaction is panic, and the training was to deal with that so you could act properly when it happened.

OOA is a real emergency now, when I started it was just one way to end a dive, no drama. Since it happened a lot, the training focused on getting you to the surface alive and well.

I encountered the same type of training later on in the Navy for fires and flooding, shut in a compartment with a fire, flooding, or both and have to stop the emergency. Now I'm pretty sure the instructors would not let me die, but at sea there were no instructors to end the problem. I liked the practice.

Then even with the practice you still don't know how you'd react in a real situation and hope you never find out.

Each situation is different so ultimately you can't really know until the s**t hits the fan, but if you train and practice you have the tools to extricate yourself from an emergency if you use them.

In diving, and other endeavors, I have found, in an emergency, that I'm good as long as I work the problem. However I have seen panic ahead when I'm running out of possible solutions, luckily I resolved the situations before I panicked, I don't believe anyone is immune.

Yes, 3 cuft. has to be better than 0.

At the right moment it could save your life.

Sure, a Spare Air doesn't hold anywhere near enough gas to be considered a reserve.

Depends on what one considers a reserve, with the proper prejudice, one could say that about any size. 3 cuft isn't a big reserve, and perhaps less than what becomes necessary, but it is a reserve.


Bob
 
I’m really curious: has the crowd that advocates spare air EVER used it at depth? How was the experience?

Hey Compressor! Yes, I have. I had heard complaints (mostly here on Scubaboard) that Spare Air is poorly made or doesn't breathe well so I wanted to test that out. I travelled around with it for a year, and tested it out in a variety of situations whenever it was practical. (Usually the last dive of a trip before I had to empty it out again for travel.) I don't want to bore you with a dissertation on it, since as others have pointed out that running a drill isn't a real emergency and of course, everyone is different. But universally, the product worked for me as I intended it to work. At depths of say 130' or so (the deepest I testedit) it gave me perhaps 6-8 breaths. Now, that doesn't sound like much... but those extra breaths might help me to reach my buddy (who is perhaps a wee further than I would have hoped) or arrange for an orderly sharing of air without me panicing and ripping out their regulator or something. It doesn't breathe as smoothly as my standard regulator, but it was not difficult to breathe from at all. To me this added margin of error seems worth the minor inconvenience of a modestly sized extra bit of kit. I think it's a reasonable product for a particular type of diver who understands the limitations of the product and doesn't change their basic safety precautions and routines.
 
Yeah, I've gotten responses like this before, all the way up to "if you draw your main tank reserve lower than you otherwise would because you've got a full 19cf pony bottle you're going to die, it's only a matter of time". Meanwhile, no one ever says why other than that's what they think.

I am not the "you are going to die" type. But, your planning seems to be go OOA (or close) and then depend on the pony to save your life, as a regular dive plan and not as an emergency plan. This strikes me risky just as a matter of basic common sense. Like many risky divers, you may beat the risk many times, maybe over your entire life. This is called normalization of deviance ("I broke the rules and lived, so my deviation shows the rules have no purpose").

Why don't you just start diving a bigger cylinder (go from an 80 to a 100 or a 100 to a 120) and ditch the 19cf pony? That would give you the longer time you want with adequate reserve. Or, better yet, use the bigger cylinder and the pony for its intended purpose.

These are just suggestions, I am not scuba police . . .
 
Hey Compressor! Yes, I have. At depths of say 130' or so (the deepest I tested it) it gave me perhaps 6-8 breaths. Now, that doesn't sound like much... but those extra breaths might help me to reach my buddy (who is perhaps a wee further than I would have hoped) or arrange for an orderly sharing of air without me panicing and ripping out their regulator or something.

That is very interesting. 8 breaths at 130 feet could be enough to get you to the surface (you would probably get 4 or so extra breaths on the ascent). If you are OOA you are going to be ascending fast (my guess, faster than 60 fpm) and not stopping. Even at 60 fpm, that is 2 minutes, which is a breath every 10 seconds, which could be just enough . . . Certainly better than nothing at all.
 
Also, just saw this, Spare Air now has a 6cf version. Much better.
 
Also, just saw this, Spare Air now has a 6cf version. Much better.
cost wise, doesn't it make sense to just have a 6 cu ft pony bottle? Just saw a price for $380 (could be cheaper elsewhere)
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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