Safe to go to Long Hose Primary Donate without specific training?

[Blue Sparkle]

Any specific links in scubaboard you liked?

Hmm, you know, it was just reading a number of threads; I can't think of one specifically.

What made me want to do something different were these things:

1) The primary hose was always pushing over to my left and it made my jaw sore.

2) the "U" of the primary hose jutted too far to my right and would hit my buddy and/or other things.

Some things I like about the "long" hose (5' in my case):

1) The primary reg just "lands" right in my mouth; no pulling or pushing.

2) The hoses tuck in nice and tightly with no jutting "U."

3) I like that my secondary is *right there*; also if it freeflows I know about it.

4) Swimming with a buddy while sharing air is comfortable.

One thing I'm not so fond of...

1) The part of the long hose that is behind my head sometimes floats up and wants to go vertical like a hoop (I think this wouldn't happen if I had a 7' hose routed down and under a light, and/or if my first stage had a bottom port so the hose went down first [I'm less sure about the latter]

2) Giant yellow Z on my face now in photos/videos (I put the yellow cover on my primary reg.)

As far as actually setting it up, I just ordered hoses from Dive Gear Express and removed/exchanged with the existing ones. It was not difficult.

Here is the video I watched to get the hang of it. With a 5' hose I don't have the "un-tuck from light" part.

S-Drill video

Only thing is now I hear that music in my head when doing the drill

 

[TSandM]

If you are in Northern California and often dive Monterey, you should have no difficulty at all finding a long hose diver to go out with you and walk you through optimizing the management of the gear. But it isn't that difficult. The issues with the 7' hose are that you have to have some way of containing the length; those of us using canister lights have it easy, and people using backplate and harness setups without canisters can put a knife or pocket on the right waistband to do the same thing. People using standard BCs without waist webbing are, I think, better off with the 5' hose. Yes, you can loop the 7 footer under your waistband, but at least when I did that, it always ended up coming loose at some point.

It's also important to manage the rest of your gear so that you don't trap the long hose . . . but in practice, it's almost impossible to trap it in any way that will make it SHORTER than a standard octo hose. You can easily make it so you can't deploy the full length, but you can always deploy the hose between the second stage and wherever on your torso the hose has gotten trapped. In open water, this will be enough (though not optimal). In an overhead, not so much.

Ideal donation involves briefly dropping your head, so the hose will slide nicely off it, but in a single tank, even if you don't do this and push the hose backward to clear, it will work okay. This is NOT true in doubles, where pushing the hose back can easily cause it to hang up on the manifold.

At any rate, everything becomes rapidly very clear if you spend a short time with a mentor, and such folks aren't hard to find anywhere in California that I know of!