Can spare air reg be threaded on a larger tank?

[4sak3n]

Have you guys read all of the accolades people have given to the spare air when it saved their bacon? I really doubt these are all lies. It shows pretty conclusively that the thing does serve it's purpose on occasion. Main question I have, is if you are at 80' (my normal dive depth) and you have a problem, (especially on an already exhaled breath) wouldn't you be wishing you had a spare breath or two to make it to the surface? I know I would, considering most people diving in Cozumel have no backup bottles. I don't understand why everyone badmouths this product, its certainly better than hoping nothing goes wrong with your primary system. It could give you enough time to get to your buddy!

Bringing up the "accolades" in an attempt to defend SpareAir is not a smart move.

Have YOU read them MacGyver? They're a joke! I'm not commenting on whether or not I believe SpareAir has a valid use in SCUBA but those testimonials are the most ridiculous things I have ever read. The people who supposedly wrote them should have their c-cards cut up and the pieces burned.

 

[RJP]

Can spare air reg be threaded on a larger tank?

Yet, somehow there are still people that insist on saying "There's no such thing as a stupid question."

 

[MacGyverGTP]

Bringing up the "accolades" in an attempt to defend SpareAir is not a smart move.

Have YOU read them MacGyver? They're a joke!

Just to be on the same page here we are talking about these right?
Submersible Systems - Testimonials

I'm not trying to defend the product, I just want to understand why everyone hates it so much! It's cheap, easy to travel with and fun to play with.

There's definitely better solutions out there for redundant backups, but they are not cheap they are not easy to travel with, and you need to get them filled from a shop.

 

[ClayJar]

Have you guys read all of the accolades people have given to the spare air when it saved their bacon? I really doubt these are all lies.

I personally assume they are all true (with occasional misperceptions, of course), and that's what scares me.

I dive with a pony bottle even on shallow, easy dives that I've done dozens of times. If you asked my LDS, they'd probably call me the poster boy of redundancy and the very face of pony bottles. I've certainly spent plenty of time pondering safety, redundancy, and such.

Consider the following testimonials:

This Spare Air system saved my life. I have logged over 9000 dives, and I never experienced a complete failure of my gauge system before. The Spare Air system gave me enough air to swim over to my buddy and locate, secure, and breathe from his alternate air source second stage. I hope that I never again have another complete failure of my life support system while diving, but it’s good to know that my Spare Air unit is always there for me when I need it!

I had just begun to head for the surface and my dive computer was signaling for me to slow my descent. Right then I felt myself take my last breathe of air from the tank. It was empty, I was at 75 feet, and my dive buddy was nowhere to be seen. I grabbed my Spare Air and took the sweetest breath of air in 36 years. By the time I got to the surface, that Spare Air was empty and I am convinced that I couldn’t have made it up without the edge your product gave me.

The driving factor that led me to buy a Spare Air was an equipment failure that happened to me. While diving in 80 ft. of water the high-pressure hose to my instrument console ruptured. I began to ascend as rapidly as possible and just before breaking the surface I ran out of air. Ten more feet or a couple of more seconds and I would have been in some serious trouble. Never Again Without Spare Air!!

For Capt. Besser, Spare Air basically served its purpose well enough. The problem was unforeseeable, and the Spare Air made it less stressful to get to his buddy (who *was* around) and share air for the ascent. I'd consider Capt. Besser's testimonial to be reasonably good.

Now, consider David. Did he even *have* a gas plan? He had apparently just noticed that he was *well* below any thinking diver's minimum air for the dive. As he'd just started his ascent, we can assume he was likely on about an 80-foot dive. If he had the larger 3cf Spare Air, that'd be the equivalent of about 110 psi's worth of air in an AL80. If he even did the bare minimum I'd expect of the greenest diver, i.e. at least *begin* an ascent by 500 psi remaining, he would have easily made it to the surface without unholstering his Spare Air. He may as well have said, "I was a complete boneheaded *idiot*! I just about wasn't watching my air *at all*. Spare Air bailed me out, so I'll just thank Spare Air and ignore the fact that my complacency almost killed me."

As for Frank... *sigh*... Frankie, Frankie, Frankie... As everyone should know by now, a high-pressure hose failure is actually rather *boring*. See ScubaToys' "Cutting a Diver's Hose" video if you've missed that somehow. If you were deep enough with so little air that you could barely get to the surface ascending "as rapidly as possible", you were effectively out of air before you started your ascent. Don't even get me started on the outright foolhardiness of ascending as rapidly as possible at the end of an 80 foot dive. Frankly, Frankie, I'm rather surprised, indeed, that you didn't get bent.

Anyway, snapping back to this post, for the testimonials to even include such a ludicrous example as Frank's does considerable damage to the Spare Air cause. Even without such mistaken and dangerous stories as Frank's (which Frank probably believes wholeheartedly), stories such as David's are plenty enough to show rather impeachable diving. While I certainly believe that some type of redundancy is great, redundancy must *never* be used as a crutch to avoid thinking.

As I said, I dive with pony bottles, and I consider redundancy (with adequate consideration) a very worthy cause. However, I have made a pact with myself that if I *ever* have to go to my pony bottle because I was an idiot and just ran out of air, I will treat myself as if I ran out and was grievously injured. I will require myself to stop diving until such a point as I can start over from the very beginning and learn again to be a diver. (If, on the other hand, I have to go to it due to an unforeseeable gear failure or situation, I'll just correct the problem, refill the pony, and go on knowing that my pony did what it's there to do. :biggrin

 

[MacGyverGTP]

Yet, somehow there are still people that insist on saying "There's no such thing as a stupid question."

Doesn't sound like a stupid question to me. People shouldn't get ridiculed for asking a question about something they don't know about. That's just mean.

 

[MacGyverGTP]

ClayJar...

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. I am fairly new with only about 40 dives & don't claim to be right or wrong on the subject of spare-air. I am just looking to more experienced people for their take on it. When people just say "it sucks" or "I laugh at people who use it" and don't back up why, it really makes me wonder what's what. Thanks for legitimately answering my question and not tearing me apart for asking it.

 

[sunkmail]

Just to be on the same page here we are talking about these right?
Submersible Systems - Testimonials

I'm not trying to defend the product, I just want to understand why everyone hates it so much! It's cheap, easy to travel with and fun to play with.

There's definitely better solutions out there for redundant backups, but they are not cheap they are not easy to travel with, and you need to get them filled from a shop.

I'm not sure what you mean, Price aside, the other points are a non-issue:

Travel - a 19, 30, or even a 40 isn't that big in a car)
- On a plane, you have to follow the same rules as with any tank - not that handy, it's easier to rent
- take your reg and mounting with you - very little space & rent the tank

Filling - You really shouldn't be needing the unit, assuming proper diving techniques, therefore, why do you need to fill it often?

If you're using it so often that going to the shop between uses for the fill is a problem, you should probably determine the underlying reason that you keep running out of air. Fix that first! Maybe stop diving for the day if you need to deploy it, even as a drill, to help enforce that it is not something to be used casually ('Yeah, I ran out of air again. But, it's ok, I'll fill this up again and I'm good to go!' - not the best attitude)

 

[bfw]

But you have to admit, to fit both a first and second stage on a small part, is very convenient.

No, I would not admit that. It's a lousy solution that breathes like crap.

Nor is it both a first and second stage - it's a single stage regulator, and probably has a design life of fewer breaths than you can get out of a 19 cf pony. Think about this - you're the engineering manager at Spare Air. How many times is a diver supposed to actually NEED a Spare Air? To need it, you have to do so many things wrong that you have to be bucking for a Darwin award. When you DO need it, you're going to get maybe 10 breaths out of it. So, how many breathing cycles are you going to design that thing to handle before something fails? It has to be much cheaper, smaller, and lighter than a real regulator, and those aspects don't come without a loss of something somewhere else. Load a pony up with 40% and use it for a deco bottle on one deep dive, and you're probably going to draw more breaths through the reg than a Spare Air is designed to cycle in its lifetime.

 

[bfw]

Can you buy a brass adapter from the hardware store and adapt it to spare air for standard tanks?

You're starting to sound like the guy in the motorcycle newsgroup who wanted to weld up his own motorcycle frame out of electical conduit from Home Depot.

 

[RonFrank]

I'm not sure why one would want to put a spare air reg on a standard pony?

First it obviously does not fit. You may be able to screw around and make it fit?

My backup CF19 and first stage/second stage, and pressure gauge cost less then a spare air, and most of that was new equipment.

IMO spare air is for those that don't know any better.