DoctorMike,
I enjoyed the article as someone who occasionally dives mixed team. Diving wrecks in the Great Lakes I often worry more about other people who are on the boat and making sure they understand where my alternate is they run out of gas. I have visions of someone grabbing my loop then needing to buddy share from my bailout to the surface. Since buddy sharing isn't a skill that isn't often taught I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty. These are all worries on dive within the recreational limit.
As a Poseidon diver (I know, I'm going to die with so few O2 sensors) one thing to note is that many of the units don't have MAV's and training has a strong mantra of when it doubt bail out. For those units the best you could do for someone is to switch the BOV to open circuit.
Thanks! Yeah, I try not to be too specific about CCR design, since there are SO many variations...
I don't know much about Poseidons, can you tell me a bit more about that? Are you saying that there is no way of adding dil manually, or just no separate MAV button? I have the International JJ, which doesn't have a dil MAV per se, but there is the button on the ADV, which is effectively a MAV and I tell OC divers about it. I just want the OC diver to know how to safely put fresh gas in the loop.
I know that a buddy of mine with an older KISS would do that by switching the BOV, inhaling bailout, and then exhaling it into the loop. Is that what you mean? That the BOV is the way to add dil to the loop?
I guess the most important take home message is that the OC diver needs to listen to the CCR diver about the specifics of the unit. Can't really cover all possibilities in an article!