New divers and buying equipment

[Marie13]

I can personally guarantee you that you sir will NEVER "lead" me in anything.

Some of you folks are confused...well please don't be confused, I am not the scuba police. Use the gear you want. Generally when folks get this upset and don't want to see both sides of an issue it's because they have already spent money on it and no one likes to back up.

Really? Even in my most nervous Nellie moments, which were just months ago, I didn't flip out when I didn't see a yellow hose.

Take responsibility for yourself as a diver and educate yourself. Telling divers they're selfish and out to drown OOA divers because they don't have a yellow hose is just silly.

 

[Saniflush]

I have a hose wrapped in pink electrical tape.....What does that get me?

 

[stuartv]

Deco bottles do not come into this discussion. We're in the new divers area. The average SM or BM doubles diver a newbie might encounter or dive with isn't likely to have a deco bottle (out at quarry diving site, for example).

They do when you tell someone that if they see someone diving doubles they won't have a yellow hose. You've told them something that is wrong and could possibly get them in trouble when they DO see a yellow hose on someone with doubles.

At my local quarry, a decent number of tech divers come out to practice - probably more come out than do recreational divers, so the recreational divers there could easily come across one with a yellow hose - that is not an "octo".

And I already mentioned about not being uncommon to be on mixed boats of tech and rec divers. I've been on them in NC and FL. A rec diver who mugged me for my yellow hose when diving the Oriskany would probably not end up a happy camper.

 

[stuartv]

Deleted

 

[CrumhornDiver]

And even if you ARE diving as part of a group, have a buddy. Have one (or two) people in the group that you are specifically buddies with. Stay close to your buddy, even as you and your buddy(s) stay with the group.

I agree with Stuart. I wrote that poorly. I meant to frame it as: do a buddy check with your buddy or buddies (if a team of 3) and a gear check with anyone else diving with your group. They should be doing their own buddy checks in their buddy pairs/teams.

 

[stuartv]

I agree with Stuart. I wrote that poorly. I meant to frame it as: do a buddy check with your buddy or buddies (if a team of 3) and a gear check with anyone else diving with your group. They should be doing their own buddy checks in their buddy pairs/teams.

We're totally on the same page. With this being the New Divers forum and with the groups I've seen where they're all following a guide but nobody seems to have an explicit buddy, I thought it was worth spelling out.

 

[Bob DBF]

I've never seen actual evidence that an OOA diver will go for the reg in your mouth...

I sincerely hope you don't run into a diver that has run out of air, lost his buddy, and in their panic looks for any air, not necessarily a reg in their tunnel vision, and sees yours. It doesn't happen often, and shoving another reg at them, if you see them coming, can solve the problem. It has happened to me, and it was never my buddy.

The problem with air 2 and the like is they are mostly sold to newer diver as a convenience without thought to implications. I almost fell for it but I went and had a think and a bit of research. Safety starts before your climb in the water.

There is nothing inherently wrong with air 2, it is just another gear choice for a diver. It has its advantages and disadvantages, and depending on a divers personal preference is acceptable or not. Although I now use a longer hose and bungeed backup, it was not do to any inadequate performance on the part of my air2 clone. Before that I used a normal configuration with two second stages, before the yellow faceplate and hose was even available, and prior to that the normal, for the time, single second stage.

AMEN, Scubamat!!!! With the attitude some of these divers have I think if if I had to dive with them I would invest in a pony bottle and just dive alone myself. Safety does start before you get in the water and as far as equipment goes, it should start before you buy it.

I suppose I could take that attitude, however since I already dive solo, usually without a pony, there would be no point. There is a difference of opinion, dismissing another's choices as attitude doesn't really move the discussion forward.

SCUBA safety starts between your ears and depends more on one's watermanship skills than any peice of equipment.
If you could send me a list of unsafe scuba gear being sold today I would appreciate it.

Number of dives is interesting...it took me zero dives to know that I don't want my primary out of my mouth if at all avoidable. "What you don't get".......with 2499.......

The only time a diver needs the reg in their mouth is when they are breathing. Occasionally it is benificial to be able to function normally for a while without the reg in your mouth.



Bob

 

[Saboteur]

My LDS allows new divers to build their own package and then essentially put it on layaway. While you are making payments on your package you can rent anything in the shop for free. If you decide that a piece of gear you rented will work better than the equivalent piece from your original package, you simply swap it out and they adjust your payment schedule accordingly. At the end of your payment schedule you have hopefully assembled a set of gear that you will be very happy with and you get to take it home.

Interesting marketing plan. I like it.

 

[JohnnyC]

Number of dives is interesting...it took me zero dives to know that I don't want my primary out of my mouth if at all avoidable. "What you don't get".......with 2499.......

So you've decided that with a number of dives rivaling the number of digits you (presumably) have, you are more qualified to dictate best practices to people who have an order of magnitude more experience than you across the whole gamut of diving scenarios? What exactly qualifies you to make such a broad sweeping assumption that you're the one that's correct while everyone else is wrong?

You should probably also tell a number of certification agencies that they're endangering the lives of their students by dictating primary donate as an acceptable training standard.

This is the new divers forum, and you're a new diver. Think of it like driving a car. You've just got your learners permit. You wouldn't go around telling Hamilton or Vettel or Earnhardt that they're not braking correctly now would you?

Scubaboard is a great resource to LEARN, especially from divers who have forgotten more about diving, its history, its technical detail, and its future than you will probably ever learn. I'm a technical, CCR, cave diver, and I still learn new things all the time.

 

[MargaritaMike]

Imagine my relief...I can personally guarantee you that you sir will NEVER "lead" me in anything.

Some of you folks are confused...well please don't be confused, I am not the scuba police. Use the gear you want. Generally when folks get this upset and don't want to see both sides of an issue it's because they have already spent money on it and no one likes to back up.

Number of dives is interesting...it took me zero dives to know that I don't want my primary out of my mouth if at all avoidable. "What you don't get".......with 2499.......

Because this is the New Divers Forum I would like to make a comment regarding the skillset of a new diver and that of a diver with even a couple of hundred dives. The biggest thing is situational awareness. This is not to say that a new diver cannot be situationally aware. What it means is that the vast majority of newer divers are pretty busy with maintaining buoyancy, gas management, depth control, etc. Many can and do go into tasking overload with a minimal amount of extra "unexpected" tasking. If a newer diver goes into an OOA situation (although it can happen to anyone for a plethora of reasons), TYPICALLY all they want to do is BREATHE and they don't care where that next breath come from. This can also happen with a more experience diver also. They WILL go for the first regulator they see and you could have a flashing neon sign on your yellow hosed octopus and if they see the one in your mouth first, then THAT is the one they will grab or grab for. Where you get to be the hero is that you recognize this fact and give it to them because YOU know where YOUR octopus is. However, if you see them coming and are obviously in need of a breathing apparatus and if you have time, you can hand them your octopus. The yellow hose thing is a convention that has come about fairly recently in the grand scheme of things. I don't have any yellow hoses, however, I did put on some yellow hose wrap on my octopus hose in October - mainly to protect it.

So, in summary, I think that most of the folks on here "DO get it", but they also get that in the real world, diver who are in an OOA situation are NOT normal, rational people. I think that as you see more divers and more diving situations, you may better understand this perspective. One other thing - hardly anything in life (or diving) is 100% black or white. Heck, sometimes you even have yellow.

Dive safe and have fun.

Cheers - M²