Vintage divers... no BC?

[victor]

"Nemrod uses a twin hose from his avatar, I would not recommend them although they do work.They are a pain to clear if flooded and because of the distance between the reg and your mouth can freeflow or be heavy to breathe depending on you position.
The modern second stage is a definite step forward.However I have never tried a re-breather."

Not true--mostly urban legend, the hoses do not flood because there are cage valves beside the mouthpiece that prevent this, in the early days they did not have this feature and thus the continuation of this "legend." Twin hose regulators are extremely reliable, simple, maintenacnce free and do not freeze, breath quietly and smoothly, no bubbles in face, the mouthpiece is weightless and are just plain fun. The second stage being sealed is partly the reason for the low required maintenance. They are mechanically simple, use only one or two O rings and are robustly built using METAL and not plastic which is why they can last for decades with little maintenance. They can breath different but all regulators are position sensitive, double hose are more so. Nontheless, not all double hose are born equall anymore so than modern regulators. A good Royal Aqua Master, for example, when tuned by an expert can perform on par with any modern plasticfantastic and with no noisy bubbles in your face. In Europe they are called "twin hose" but in the USA they are called "double hose."

NAVED Master Dive 111

The twin hoses I dived did not have these cage valves. They would definitely have been a help.

Buddy breathing techniques would have been a lot easier if the hose did not fill up with water.
These people who complain about buddy breathing on a standard length primary, they should try a buddy breathing ascent on a twin hose. You need to be up close and friendly.
Buddy breathing was much easier with the tank between you.

I do like the idea of having all the bubbles behind me, it would be great for photography.

I think I will have to investigate this further.

Does any maufacturer make a modern version of the twin hose?

 

[Luis H]

Does any maufacturer make a modern version of the twin hose?

The Aqua Lung new Mistral is OK; I own one (for comparison purposes only). I prefer a Royal Aqua Master (or my new version: the Phoenix Royal Aqua Master).

If you want further information on double hose regulators you should visit the Sea Hunt section of this message board, VintageDoubleHose.com, and VintageScubaSupply.com.

There was no guarantee the gear was going to work 100% of the time and it didn’t. Failures used to be somewhat common and today they are rare.

Gary D.

I don’t know how did this rumor about reliability started, but I started repairing diving equipment in 1971 and I am convinced that modern equipment is not any more reliable than equipment from the 70’s (or 60’s). Not only have I witness more failures in the last year, on high end less than a year old regulators, but I can demonstrate both analytically and from personal experience that the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of something like a Royal Aqua Master (or even a Scubapro Mk-5) is superior to most modern regulators. Many of the basic designs haven’t changed much, but the parts count (including O-ring count) on many modern regulators have more than double. IMHO the misuse of some modern materials is partially to be blamed for an over all decrease in reliability.

In the old days I would have never felt a need for an alternate air source. Regulators are not supposed to fail. I still don’t feel a need to have redundancy with most of my vintage gear. I do use an octopus now a days (since I dive with non-vintage buddies), but that is the most likely piece of equipment to free flow because it is exposed to the elements.



Most of my experience of diving without a BC started in the early 70’s in the Caribbean (mostly Puerto Rico). Using only a wetsuit shorty it is extremely easy to be neutral. Neutral buoyancy was taught and practiced in the basic Scuba course.

I started using my Fenzy very early, but only as a surface flotation device (see the left avatar picture, the one on the right is only one year old, same regulator).

During my early dive training we had to swim laps on the surface not using the air out of our tanks and no surface flotation device. We had to do it with and without a snorkel, with and without a mask, and with and without our fins.

Diving with heavy neoprene, it was normal to weight yourself to be neutral at 15 to 20 feet or deeper (this was before the safety stop). Even with the safety stop, I prefer to be neutral at 15 feet with an empty tank (unless I have a long shallow swim back).

 

[J.R.]

"Old Timers"... "vintage"... eh? [Grump... ]

I learned to dive in 70... your techique is adjusted to yer' equipment. Weighting and technique were designed for the state-of-the-art of the time.

I had to kinda' 'relearn' a lot of stuff when I got back into diving this year... BCs are kinda cool... and it does make life easier in some senses... and, from a purely 'safety' point of view the new improvements in technology rock (IMOH)... but, maybe, its just that I got geeky over the years and my only complaint is that there isn't an MP3 player in my dive computer so I can listen to some environment appropriate tunes while I dive... (hey... SOMEBODY WANNA' WORK ON THIS!!!)...

... but... back in the 70's we were also taught "water is a hostile environment and things down there can kill ya'..." My training was a bit more rigorous and physical... no quite as 'touchy-feely' as I'm hearing today... ain't saying one is better than the other... its just a different world. In some ways I seem to think that diving was actually much easier back then... you swam down... you swam up. We *did* have what are now refered to as *snorkeling vests*... blow a bit of air down the tube if ya' needed an ascent assist (emergency use only)... decents were head down (surface dive) which helped to get past the first few feet and get some wetsuit compression going for ya'...

... yep...

But the reality, for me, is that the only *real* benefit I find in the *vintage* method is that there was less junk to buy and less to have to haul around with ya'...

J.R.

 

[Nemrod]

Victor, the Royal Aqua Master was not the twin hose you probalby dove back then. Here is the Phoenix conversion that LuisH invented, avaialble in extremely limited quantities. This regulator performs on par with any modrn regulator plus the benifit of LP and HP ports galore.

Dive charters often freak out when you show up with no BC or octapus.


JR:
"But the reality, for me, is that the only *real* benefit I find in the *vintage* method is that there was less junk to buy and less to have to haul around with ya'..."

Well, yes, but that is a pretty big deal too. Here is a DA Aqua Master with modern Faber LP 85, Air Buddy alternate and spg via a banjo adapter.

The traditional harness is really great to dive with,simple and clean.

Swim down, swim around, swim up.

N
NAVED 111

 

[louisianadiver]

Here's one of my old buddies from the 70's cruising a Louisiana oil rig. He's wearing one of those vests with the co2 cartridge--not a BCD that could be inflated underwater for buoyancy control. A steel 72 on a backplate was the whole rig. No need for weights. -Clay

 

[Scotty g]

Nemrod, great pictures and posts. A very interesting read

Scotty

 

[Stu S.]

One guy who had buoyancy trouble was my brother. We got a mold and made lead weights. I bought some lead from a salvage yard. He started diving about a year later. With a 1/4 inch "Farmer" suit he put on five "3 pound" lweights, and could not sink into the quarry water. I remember he turned red in the face trying. I handed him a rock and down he went. After the dive, I looked at his weights and they were new, shiny, and seemed awfully light. Further investigation determined that he had cast them from scrap solder, which is 60% tin and 40% lead. It was used stuff from a circuit board soldering machine.

He went over to Joe Dorsey's dive shop, bought five real lead weights, and dove happily ever after. I still have some of those that he gave me when he quit siving.