An actual legitimate use for spare air???

[Ana]

Wow I wish I had the same faith you have in the accuracy of my SPG's. There are lots of situations where the needle on a mechanical gauge got stuck and was reading a higher level than actual.

Things go south, I don't know about "lots of situations" but when is your day for things to go wrong, they just go.

HOWEVER,,,,, One should know how much air one has at pretty much every time. Granted this is not applicable to the person that just started to dive this past Monday, but anyone with a couple of dozen dives under their belt should know within 100psi up/down how much air they have before looking at the gauge. If one doesn't know it, then maybe one needs to figure a way to know it.

 

[lowwall]

Maybe getting some rope or debris off the prop of your 20' boat. That won't take more than 5-10 min.

That's a hell of a draft. You drive a cruise ship?

I've unwrapped a couple of props freediving without too much difficulty. My favorite was the plastic yellow "Police line. Do not cross". Having 2 hands was a necessity though. Don't you need to hold the spare air with one hand?

 

[lexvil]

Diving with a 3 cf spare air is a false sense of security. Executing a planned solo dive well within gas reserves with a fully redundant 40 cf alternate air source along with the experience & training to use it and to deal with the most likely issues that may arise is not that.

Not that I disagree with you beyond different peoples perspective of sense of security, 3 is more than 0, if 40 works, why not 63 or an 80? People carry a spare mask, two computers I guess one could carry a spare fin too, all serve the same purpose, sense of security.

 

[lexvil]

I keep a few hazmat spare airs around the house. You never know.....View attachment 612865

With the fires in Ca. lately these could be marketed as respite air

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Not that I disagree with you beyond different peoples perspective of sense of security, 3 is more than 0, if 40 works, why not 63 or an 80? People carry a spare mask, two computers I guess one could carry a spare fin too, all serve the same purpose, sense of security.

You're missing a key point. It's called contingency planning. It is covered thoroughly in any Solo/Self-Reliant Diver course. When it comes to an alternate air source you carry enough gas to ensure that in the event of a gas emergency at the deepest planned depth you can (1) take 2-3 minutes at depth to sort things out and (2) safely & slowly ascend to the surface. Unless you are doing a 3' dive a 3 cf alternate air source is NEVER going to meet that criteria. For the majority of folks diving within recreational depths, an AL40 will meet that criteria. For many an AL30, AL19 or even AL13 will as well based upon their SAC and their planned depth.

You also want to factor in the effort of carrying the alternate air source. An AL40 or AL30 are frequently discussed because they fit nicely a compromise between ease of carrying it as a stage relative to the gas provided. An AL80 does give you more gas but it is also more work to carry it and the need for that much gas just isn't there.

It all comes down to planning.

 

[lexvil]

You're missing a key point. It's called contingency planning. It is covered thoroughly in any Solo Diving course. When it comes to an alternate air source you carry enough gas to ensure that in the event of a gas emergency at the deepest planned depth you can (1) take 2-3 minutes at depth to sort things out and (2) safely & slowly ascend to the surface. Unless you are doing a 3' dive a 3 cf alternate air source is NEVER going to meet that criteria. For the majority of folks diving within recreational depths, an AL40 will meet that criteria. For many an AL30, AL19 or even AL13 will as well based upon their SAC and their planned depth.

You also want to factor in the effort of carrying the alternate air source. An AL40 or AL30 are frequently discussed because they fit nicely a compromise between easy of carrying it as a stage relative to the gas provided. An AL80 does give you more gas but it is also more work to carry it and the need for that much gas just isn't there.

It all comes down to planning.

I get where you’re coming from and the point I’m making is the spare air is for that diver who plans to never run out of air but worries along the what if line of thinking, it serves that purpose just fine. For the money a 40 makes leaps and bounds more sense and isn’t really much harder to bring along but some people like them, if it makes them feel safer cool.

 

[yle]

IMHO Yeah, I have thoughts. You guys do this every year at just about exactly this time. Start a nonsense thread with some moronic premise for a [MY OPINION] dangerous product. Really helps with sales at the incoming holiday season. Monterey/Huntington Beach, do the math...

New community member? @spitfiremac do you have any financial or familial connections to Submersible Systems LLC Huntington Beach (Orange County), California?

This is an interesting idea, but I'm going to guess that the OP really has no connection to the company or any interest in boosting sales. For one thing, the target shoppers would have to be people who are buying things for scuba divers... but probably aren't divers themselves (which is why they would have to solicit advice.) And second... anyone reading one of these threads would definitely NOT come to the conclusion that a Spare Air would make a great gift for the diver on their list.

It's far more likely that the occasional new diver really is interested in hearing our advice on Spare Air. So the Spare Air threads will continue to repeat every several months.

 

[yle]

The selling point of the SA seems to be that it's small enough to be convenient (i.e. easy to take with you on every dive) and just big enough to give you something in an emergency.

But the problem, from what I have witnessed of people's behavior (i.e. people that bought SA's) is that they are just big enough to be a little awkward... and so the people that bought them for the "convenience" tend to find them just big enough to be inconvenient. And they stay on the boat. Or they stay at home. And every dive that goes as planned serves to convince the Spare Air owner that they made the right choice leaving it at home.

Human nature defeats Spare Air use.

 

[lowwall]

People look at this in two ways. One way is to realistically assess the conditions under which a spare air would be useful. This results in a determination that such conditions don't exist. The other way is to replace all that hard thinking with the simple question "If I'm out of air, would I want some more air?"

The two groups can't communicate with each other. Group two isn't interested in scenario parsing and group one isn't interested in anything else. That's why these threads go nowhere.

 

[yle]

I've unwrapped a couple of props freediving without too much difficulty. My favorite was the plastic yellow "Police line. Do not cross". Having 2 hands was a necessity though. Don't you need to hold the spare air with one hand?

No, it can easily be held with just the mouthpiece, hands free. The cylinder is pretty close to neutral.