Recreational Pony Bottles, completely unnecessary? Why or why not?

[Searcaigh]

I don't know... but do you see alot of sidemount????
Seems to me sidemount is the new travel friendly doubles....
2 aluminum tanks rented anywhere is a set of doubles with less hassle than backmount .

We had three side mount divers on the boat last Friday and two of us carrying ponies out of 15 divers on our boat. The other two boats from the dive centre with about 20 divers between them were all back mount.

 

[Blackcrusader]

How will that help this discussion? Why can't you tell me in a sentence or so why it has to take 9 minutes for an OOA diver to go to the surface from 80 feet on an NDL dive?

Who is going to take 9 minutes to get to the surface in an OOA from 80 feet and live?
More likely to be closer to 90 seconds in an emergency ascent.

 

[Hartattack]

Who is going to take 9 minutes to get to the surface in an OOA from 80 feet and live?
More likely to be closer to 90 seconds in an emergency ascent.

You didn’t read past this question did you?

 

[shoredivr]

I dive in the cold waters of the Great Lakes. Free flows happen. Sharing air with a Buddy puts extra demand on their single tank’s first stage which can precipitate another free flow.

With redundant gas (slung tank or sidemount) I just switch to the other tank, shut off the free flowing tank, and end the dive.

 

[KenGordon]

I dive in the cold waters of the Great Lakes. Free flows happen. Sharing air with a Buddy puts extra demand on their single tank’s first stage which can precipitate another free flow.

With redundant gas (slung tank or sidemount) I just switch to the other tank, shut off the free flowing tank, and end the dive.

Good point.

Cold water freeflows are very common here. In my experience almost all the real OOG incidents have been caused this way. Some quarries here insist on redundant gas below 30m.

I am still waiting for the OP to do the maths on pony sizing though.

 

[scubaozy]

I dive in the cold waters of the Great Lakes. Free flows happen. Sharing air with a Buddy puts extra demand on their single tank’s first stage which can precipitate another free flow.

With redundant gas (slung tank or sidemount) I just switch to the other tank, shut off the free flowing tank, and end the dive.

That in your opinion makes it reasonable for rest of the divers in the world diving warm and temperate waters to carry a pony for every single dive? Do you also carry redundant gas when you go diving in warm waters? You do not need to have redundant supply for cold water, you can use Y valve with 2 independent regulators. When carrying a pony or other type of redundant supply, you are actually reducing your available air supply because of increased drag.

 

[Wibble]

That in your opinion makes it reasonable for rest of the divers in the world diving warm and temperate waters to carry a pony for every single dive? Do you also carry redundant gas when you go diving in warm waters? You do not need to have redundant supply for cold water, you can use Y valve with 2 independent regulators. When carrying a pony or other type of redundant supply, you are actually reducing your available air supply because of increased drag.

You can’t shut down a Y valve. There’s no additional gas reserves

 

[scubaozy]

You can’t shut down a Y valve. There’s no additional gas reserves

Y do you need additional reserves? You need them only if you dive overhead, we are talking about recreational diving. If I plan decompression dive in near freezing, I would want to have fully redundant reserves, other than that Y will be enough.

 

[grf88]

I believe the following two posts from 2004 sum it up nicely. Nobody is suggesting that everybody should dive with a pony. The only request that I have that is if somebody does want to dive with a pony that they should not be discouraged from doing so which is so often the case.


DivinHoosier
"I can't believe we continue to bash this back and forth. If you want to use one, use one. If you want to dive doubles, dive doubles. If you want to rely on the buddy team only, rely on the buddy team only. As my mother would say, "Goodness gracious!""




[IMG alt="Nemrod"]https://scubaboard.com/community/data/avatars/m/34/34955.jpg?1479613487[/IMG]

Nemrod​

Contributor​

DivnHoosier, the answer to your question is because every time a person asks a simple question about how to rig a pony, tips on use, appropriate sizes, how to travel with them or whatever they get shouted down by the scubaDIRboard police who insist on monopolizing the field of opinion that theirs alone is fact and everybody other than them is in need of their superior training at which point they would see the carmic light and realize how stupid they have been for even thinking to use a pony bottle. BS.

N

 

[Wibble]

Y do you need additional reserves? You need them only if you dive overhead, we are talking about recreational diving. If I plan decompression dive in near freezing, I would want to have fully redundant reserves, other than that Y will be enough.

Someone who’s distracted and empties their cylinder. Y not help.

Dealing with an hose or O-ring failure. Y not help.

Some unforeseen incident requiring gas to be passed to someone else (e.g. entrapment).

Just the standard reasons for redundancy.