Inflating DSMB from exhaled gas

[EireDiver606]

To be completely honest, I don't know of a single method that I wholeheartedly endorse. I have done it a number of ways myself and have never been fully satisfied with any of them. I show students what I am doing at the moment, but I suggest they investigate a variety of methods online and choose whichever they prefer. I don't care which method they use, as long as it is safe and minimizes the critical risk of line entanglement.

For me, the biggest problem I see with the methods shown in most videos is they are always showing it done with small spools. When I am sending up a bag, it is most often from depths like 200 feet, and my students have to demonstrate that as well. Things are different when you are using a reel with that much line on it.

Reels like to take people for rides in high swells.

 

[JohnnyC]

Reels like to take people for rides in high swells.

Not anymore than spools do. If I'm shooting a bag from deep, I use a reel too. Spools just aren't long enough, especially in current.

 

[-JD-]

I was taught to dump my BC into the open bottom of the SMB. No change in buoyancy since the air in your BC just moves to the SMB. Works great at 30' or 180'.

I think the idea of using the BC inflator is to dump air from the BC and/or press the inflate button and deflate button at the same time to inflate the SMB. That's my understanding anyway, I don't do it.
-SNIP-

The nice thing about this technique is that the "system" (you & bag) buoyacy remains the same. Take as much time as you need to get the bag sorted out and initially inflated with just BC dump - you aren't getting dragged up. If you need more gas, the bag isn't flopping all over and a quick shot should do it. BC inflate & dump simultaneuosly to top off means you are already poised to start reestablishing bc-buoyancy and you can hang a little on the spool/reel to keep you in place.

I definately need to practice more to get smooth, but for me, it beats getting dragged up by a 40# bag.

 

[shoredivr]

A lot of people who do that are using a deco or pony bottle with an extra LP hose on it.

That’s what I do.

 

[EireDiver606]

Not anymore than spools do. If I'm shooting a bag from deep, I use a reel too. Spools just aren't long enough, especially in current.

Fair enough for really deep. I thought he meant reels all the time. Reels can be locked in place, spools are loose all the time, it’s just your hands holding tension, that’s what I meant.

 

[BlueTrin]

Fair enough for really deep. I thought he meant reels all the time. Reels can be locked in place, spools are loose all the time, it’s just your hands holding tension, that’s what I meant.

I have noticed you mentioned this spool vs reel in another thread. Is that because DIR recommends using a spool ?

 

[Diving Dubai]

I've personally never been a fan or dsmb inflation using the reg exhaust. I think it's nonsense. Most times I've witnessed it, it's been buy guided trying to look cool at or near the safety stop. I strongly believe that if you launch a dsmb to the surface you want it fairly full of air. Having something sticking up a few inches in the sea is pointless.

We here have to put up a dsmb on every dive, thus over teh last 5 years I've become quite practised. I admit to generally using my AP crack bottle because I'm lazy and it's fire and forget (It will hit the surface fully inflated from any depth), but if I'm teaching or not carrying it, then I use the open bottom and a reg.

Because my alt 2nd is on a rubber bungee I either use that or I put that in my mouth and use my primary. Often I just take out my primary and use that because the process is so quick.

I've never had any desire to use an LP inflator hose version I personally don't see any advantages. Oral inflate. Yes done that but only on small dsmb's which have no place in a decent chop.

I'm a spool guy rather than reel, I used to be the other way around as I couldn't find a spool that I could cleanly launch (lazy) Sometime I still carry a reel on certain dives just in case. I see no issues with reels, if it locks let go, equally any gear needs practise to get familiar with.

 

[EireDiver606]

I have noticed you mentioned this spool vs reel in another thread. Is that because DIR recommends using a spool ?

No. It’s because it safer. Many people have had runaway ascents with reels that have the lock function. Plus they’re big and bulky.

 

[johndiver999]

That sounds like a skills problem - why not just let go of the reel?

If you are deep, you only need like 5- 8 lbs of air when you release, so an initial mistake can probably be remedied by exhaling, dumping air from BC and hauling the thing back down? .

 

[boulderjohn]

I would much prefer to use a spool when shooting a bag. Reels are much harder to work with.

On the other hand, I was just trying to remember when I last shot a bag using a spool outside of instruction. I had to do it a couple of years ago in South Florida when a boat mistook my dive flag for the one their diver had left behind and ran off with it. I honestly can't remember the last time before that. Shooting a bag at the depths that would allow me to use a spool such as you see in all the instructional videos is just not a feature of the diving I do. I almost always have one along just in case I need it, as when the boat swiped my flag, but things like that do not happen all that often.

Every time I have shot a bag on a pleasure dive in recent years, it has been too deep for the amount of line I needed to reach the surface to be carried on a spool. I had to use a reel.