Give up my primary regulator???

[Waterwulf]

Hello all. I've been lurking here for a while and finally registered so I can ask a couple of questions. First, a little about myself.

I looked under the surface of the water in the Keys in 1967 and got hooked. Not long after that, I got certified by Tauch Gruppe Lorrach, a dive organization in Germany. That was mostly river and lake diving but I did get to dive off of the Italian coast a few times. Then I moved back to North Florida and got certified again in 1974 by NAUI. That was a 42 hour course plus 4 open water dives one of which was a required free ascent from sixty feet. The other three were 100' +. After that, I spent a lot of years diving all over the Florida Gulf coast from Pensacola to Key West. I also did a fair amount of cave diving in a couple of fresh water springs in North Florida and some "drift hang diving" in the Rainbow River. (Hanging under the boat while the current pulled us down river)

Then I moved to Arizona and instead of diving 2 or 3 times a week, I only got to dive on vacations. Then I got hurt pretty badly and haven't dove at all since 2006. But now I'm back!!! I got cleared by my doctor and am scheduled for a less-than-full-class-but-more-than-a pool-dip refresher course. I have spent a lot of time reading stuff here and in other places to get myself updated before my class starts. That brings me to two questions:

I and everybody that I dove with, always used a J valve on our tanks. Now it seems nobody uses them. Why not? I've read all kinds of reasons as to why not but it doesn't make sense. "They didn't have submersible pressure gauges on hoses on their regulators back then so they needed to have a reserve". Uhmm, yes we all had gauges and they were accurate too. "You couldn't rely on the reserve system because it was to easy to bump it on". Uhmm, no it wasn't easy to bump it on but you were trained to check it every few minutes anyway, along with your SPG. "Your tanks didn't get filled all of the way if you left it on while they were filling". Sure, but they didn't get filled at all if you didn't open the valve so you checked it all then. Can somebody please give me a better reason as to why J valves are no longer used by "modern" divers?

We were all trained for "Buddy breathing" so we could share one regulator. They had four of us sitting on the pool bottom for five minutes all sharing one regulator. Do it or fail. After we learned the "hard way", we were trained to use an octopus regulator. All of us installed one on our rigs. The training for that was easy: Your partner would signal "No air" and you'd hand him your extra second stage. That's where the second question comes in.

We were trained to hand over our EXTRA second stage..the one that usually rides along clipped to our harness. You kept your primary in your mouth where it belonged! If your partner was in a hurry, he might grab you by your harness and unclip the octopus himself. Now I read that you're supposed to hand him/her your primary and you use your octopus. Say what? Why would I want to do that? It seems to me that if he needs some of my air, it's already a declared emergency so why would we want to have both of us with our regulators out? Somebody please explain that to me. Thanks.

 

[KevinNM]

A diver in trouble knows exactly where one working regulator is - in your mouth. You know your equipment so you should be able to easily find your alternate. If you have trouble rapidly and consistently finding your alternate then perhaps you should consider better ways to carry it.

 

[guruboy]

You don't always donate your primary. It depends on your configuration.

 

[northernone]

Welcome. Looking forward to having more of your stories and experience shared. Glad you're able to return to diving.

Regarding the sharing Octo or primary you've swam into a popular methodology squabble at the moment. Some training suggestions one some the other. Loud opinionated divers on both sides. I just check with my buddy before a dive which we will be not doing.

Dive happy.
Cameron

 

[tbone1004]

@Waterwulf
Some quick history on the valves.
J valves were more premium valves due to the cost and complexity vs. K-valves, but at the time the SPG's were released, the gauge itself was more expensive than the regulator. With normal recreational dives the J valve made more sense simply due to cost of the gauges. With the cost of SPG's now, especially when factored against the cost and complexity of the J-valve they are just impractical. The mechanism is complicated and the levers easy to damage. No real justification to continue using them with SPG's as cheap as they are now.

On primary donate. This is plan for the worst, hope for the best. You plan for the worst which is the diver grabs the second stage out of your mouth. In a panic situation you have something in your mouth that is making bubbles, they want something in their mouth that makes bubbles, so they take it. May as well have you as a diver plan for it to be taken so it doesn't matter.
Hope for the best is that they ask nicely for the regulator. If they ask, you can make the "pass and slide" motion in less than a second and have the known working primary out of your mouth, mouthpiece down so it stays filled with air and ready for the OOA diver to receive without having to purge. In that motion of removing it with your right hand, you are using your left hand to slide the secondary up and into your mouth where you purge the regulator and verify that it functions.
Both divers are out of air for the duration that it takes you to put the other regulator into your mouth and purge it, but it is one motion and you are breathing on your secondary before the OOA diver is on your primary.
You have control of the primary second stage at all times during this so you can take it back if you have to resort to buddy breathing in the event of a failed second stage. Once secondary is confirmed to be functioning, your left hand reaches out and grabs their right shoulder strap to gain control of the OOA diver to make sure they don't bolt and take you with them.

With regards to proper secondary function. In the "normal" regulator setup, there is high risk that the secondary will come out of the holder and drag through something, get caught on something, or get to a point that you are not able to easily retrieve it. All of these things lead to complications in getting a functioning regulator into the mouth of the OOA diver which lead to increased risk that they will try to take the regulator in your mouth.
With a primary donate setup, the secondary is on a suicide strap under your chin and is kept out of any entanglements and is always in an easy to reach location.

The pass and slide process with primary donate puts a regulator in both divers mouths faster than a secondary donate/take does under normal circumstances with significantly less risk of the secondary second stage malfunctioning and zero risk of the secondary second stage not being where you thought you put it.

 

[mdb]

In a real panic situation the panicked diver is going for your primary.

You go on your secondary.

After a few deep breaths the OOA diver should be able to make a controlled
ascent.

Twice in 40 years this has occurred in my diving.

I have described all this before: Once a good buddy, who I had practiced buddy breathing
with many times, panicked and grabbed my regulator and clamped down. This was pre
octo days. I bailed out of my rig and made a free ascent from 60+ feet. My buddy came up
in a sea of bubbles a minute or so later.

The other time, on a deeper dive 120 feet or so, a diver had a 1st stage failure and came over
my head and took the primary. He was a very experienced diver. I went on the secondary and we
made a slow controlled ascent.

I am on the side of donate/give up/surrender your primary and go to the secondary.

 

[MichaelMc]

If you want a long discussion on primary donate, here is a thread on it. I use primary donate and help teach it.

Donating the "primary" regulator

 

[SeaHorse81]

As @Jim Lapenta has pointed out, an advantage to donating your primary is that there is the unconscious reassurance to the diver in need that, "Here you go, you're okay because see, I was just using it myself."

 

[Jerome O'Neil]

The notion of "donating" a regulator to an out of air diver is one of those things that the agencies teach that ave no basis in reality. In reality, you're going to be confronted with a wide eyed verge of panic freakout show looking for the first available source of air they can find, which is the one in your mouth. You're not going to donate it, you're just going to find it gone.

You want it on a long hose so that after you have yourself situated with your secondary (conveniently placed right under your chin) the aforementioned panic monster can get them selves together at a safe distance from you.

 

[beaverdivers]

We have been teaching " What-Works-Under-Worst-Scenario " to give your primary since the late 70's when the A.I.R. II ( Alternate Inflator Regulator ) was first introduced. Now the A.I.R. II is in it's 5th generation.

You use your auto-inflator multiple times on every dive, so you know where your A.I.R.II is.