Solo and the Octo

[captain]

Nemrod, you missed a chance to push vintage two hose regulators for solo diving. No O rings other than the yoke and valve to fail and you can eliminate the valve by using the old 1/2 inch tapered pipe thread valve.

Captain

 

[Nemrod]

"The larger issue affecting many topics on this board is that many if not most divers are making decisions about their diving equipment and techniques based on indoctrination rather than on experience and critical thinking. "

Yes DA, exactly, if I stepped on someones toes--again--I am sorry---lol and yes I agree with what your saying about indoctrination--I see it too.

"Nemrod, you missed a chance to push vintage two hose regulators for solo diving. No O rings other than the yoke and valve to fail and you can eliminate the valve by using the old 1/2 inch tapered pipe thread valve."

I know Captain, I did miss a chance. You may laugh but it was my renewed interest in solo which was in turn sparked by my purchase of a little kayak that led me down the road to a revived interest in double hose regulators. I was trying to streamline and simplyfy for shallow excursions from my kayak and now I have gone full blown FROGMAN. When I pulled my old Mistral out of the closet and slapped those new hoses on it--wow---I have returned from the dark side of plastic and consoles and neon, yes, I am VINTAGE and it is good!
Hey there is a thread going on about Atomic being the best--lol---double hoses are best, any frogman would know that! These guys and those silly little single hose jobs--talk about indoctrination--holy cow!!! N

 

[Scuba]

Scuba, the reason the old rule says twice your free diving depth--and it is not my rule---it was taught me and it is in old dive manuals --vs as you said 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever times is really very simple to understand. To put it another way never dive deeper than the distance you can swim underwater without having real redundancy (we talking solo here) because that is the distance or depth from which you should be able to safely reach the surface after a problem. When you freedive, as you well know, say you can comfortably freedive 30 feet--well, then that is an overall round trip distance of 60 feet and thus your solo or no redundant equipment max depth is 60 feet--not 90 or 120 or 300. Like I said, it is a rule I mostly follow but it is not my rule. When exceeding that depth--especially solo--then I feel I need real redundancy and that means something other than an octa.

Makes sense to me. For some reason I completely failed to account for the descent part of a free dive. Got stuck on ascent. Everybody plays a fool sometimes, as long as I do so seldom and far between, i can live with it and admit it. Thank you for the explanation.

An H or Y valve will not fully protect the main gas source as it will not protect you from a blown neck O-ring or a blown burst disc.

Thank you for the quick correction. My mistake, somehow I switched from regulator system to gas source. Not a good day to be diving, or commenting and advising on Scubaboard for that matter. Thanks again guys for the quick corrections.

So it is inevitable that divers who approach diving from a critical thinking perspective where they engage in a critical self analysis of the reasons why they do everything a particular way and evaluate how well a partiticular item or technique meets their specific needs and then adjust or modify their equipment or techniques accordingly, will always conflict with divers who rely on indoctrination and make choices in techniques and configuration soley on how they were trained or based on what they have been told by an authority..

You hit the nail on the head in your post. Our educational institutions do a lousy job at teaching people how to think - critical thinking. They do much better at teaching students "what" to think and "why" to think it. I'm not sure if this has not always or almost always been the case. It's probably pretty universal too. After all, history is always written and altered by the victors.

Another issue with discussions is that some tend to identify their believes with personal character, don't differentiate at all, thus, to be wrong is thought of as an attack on personal integrity. Others will see there are some distinct differences, realize that the information one has today will lead to a certain belief which is subject to change when heretoforth unknown information and explanations are acquired. A perfectly natural process unaffecting character as long as thinking is performed. But all to often it becomes the me right - you wrong game. At that point the issue being discussed no longer matters, it turns into a free for all mud slinging fest where everything goes. We don't have too many of those any more! I kind of miss them sometimes. lol

 

[ScubaSarus]

My only qualm about losing the octo it that one of our divers had a diaphram failure at depth in his primary. A tiny cut in it. I do believe it would be wise if diaphrams were readily available to replace twice a year since they are so easy to replace.

I guess sand, pebbles or other debris can mar the surface of diaphrams. Another reason to take apart the second stages now and then for inspection.