Give up primary or secondary for OOA diver?

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Rick Inman:
BTW, FWIW, I don't mind rehashing the same old questions. You get new people with new perspectives, and old people who have changed theirs, posted in a new and current way, and readable without having to hash through 25 pages from people who may or may not even be around.
And you end up with distributed information, making it more difficult with each duplicate thread to find existing information and lessening the value of the board overall as an information resource. MHO

Roak
 
roakey:
And you end up with distributed information, making it more difficult with each duplicate thread to find existing information and lessening the value of the board overall as an information resource. MHO

Roak
...or, two Mods just end up rehashing whether a thread should be rehashed or not. :D
 
Donate whichever hose is longest.

/thread
 
OOA I'll donate my primary, that way the person knows they are getting a working fully functional regulator and it'll be the quickest way of getting air to them and releive some of there distress. I know I wouldn't want to wait for my buddy to dig up his octo while I was sitting there not breathing... we can switch the regs up to whatever is the most comfortable after things are under control.

Low on air, the much more likely situation, they'll get my octo and to the surface we'll go with a proper ascent.
 
Donate the primary. The out of air diver knows its working. I keep my primary on a 7' hose. This makes it ideal for comfortable air sharing and absolutely necessary in an overhead environment or in a current. I keep my "octo" or second regulator on a 22" hose which I have on a surgical tube necklace around my neck.

Disregarding hose lengths, donating the primary should be a basic SCUBA standard. I would not dive with anyone who wants to give me a regulator that is not in their mouth. They are not concerned about my safety and will not be a good buddy.

This is the bottom line. When I am out of air I need a regulator that is working and I don't have much time. You will be sucking down air and will have time to work things out with your other regulator if there is a problem. If it doesn't work, we can begin buddy breathing off of one reg. If you give me a regulator that doesn't work I AM GOING TO DIE.

Pretty basic. This should be common sense.
 
It would be impossible for me to donate my Air-2, seeing as it's in a box in my basement.

:-)

But seriously - and relatedly - my alternate is bungied around my neck and my primary is on a 7' hose. An OOA or LOA diver will end up with my primary reg whether he snatches it from my mouth or I give it up willingly.

Unless of course he has his mask on his forehead...

Oops, wrong thread!
 
You can make an argument that any time a diver doesn't have a regulator in his mouth, there's a risk of a problem -- That he might not find a regulator to put in his mouth, might put it in wrong (eg. upside-down), or the one he finds might not be working. If an OOA diver approaches you and you give him your own regulator, then he's got to switch from his own to yours, and you have to switch from your primary to your secondary. Two people have to negotiate the transfer to a new regulator without incident. Twice as much possibility for error or problem.

You can also argue that somebody who is OOA is in the most desperate and potentially lethal situation you can be in underwater. That person needs something to breathe, and probably NOW. The very fastest way to get a working regulator in their mouth is to give them the one you're breathing. You know exactly where it is, and you know it is working (and for technical diving, you know the gas it's providing is appropriate, too.) You, on the other hand, are relatively unstressed, and if for some weird reason your secondary regulator is not immediately at hand or working perfectly, you are in a FAR better position to grapple with that problem. (And if your secondary regulator is secured on a necklace under your chin, it's unlikely you are going to have any difficulty finding it, and equally unlikely that there's going to prove to be anything wrong with it when you do.)

As with many things in diving, you can analyze the situation in different ways. Each of us has to weigh the pros and cons of each approach and decide what makes sense to US. And then you have to make sure the people with whom you dive know which approach you have selected.
 
Octo users tend to all stow them in a little different place and in a little different way. I'd rather not have to look for it. Half the time they come lose and they can't even find it.

They're taught to put it in that "golden triangle" (between the corners of their mouth to the corners of their rib cage but...if the divers are horizontal (they should be) and at the same depth (they should be), you can't really see much of that golden triangle can you? It's a system perfectly designed for two divers facing eachother kneeling on the bottom...where it's usually practiced in class but who wants to dive that way?

You can't count on color to pick out which is the right one. When there are problems you just can't count on have decent vis.

You always know where the other guys mouth is and thats's the best place to look for air.
 
Mike, I wonder if we could develop a new propulsion technique. The diver assumes a "kneeling" or upright position and then uses mostly their hands or even better a bicycle kick to move around. This way all the crap they have clipped off to their jacket BCD won't be dragging around the bottom, their octo should be in plain view, and we'll be able to spot these divers quite easily.
 

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