Have you ever run out of gas, or been close?

[CuNanoTube]

Closest I have been is 500 PSI bar one dive where I knowingly went to 300 to empty the tank a bit before getting it cleaned. I had my pony and my buddy next to me when down to 500, so there was no concern.

 

[SnorkelLA]

I've had a regulator malfunction while cave diving when my first stage hit the roof of the cave, cutting off my air.

Other than that, I've never RAN OUT of air.

 

[KY_BOB]

No. I've intentionally pulled a set of doubles down to 250psi to check buoyancy. I've also surfaced with 500psi with an AL80 but was down to 250-300psi because I let others get on the boat first while the waves were bad enough that I stayed on the regulator instead of getting saltwater in my mouth.

 

[fyue]

I have had one OOA incident. I have written up an assessment of it on my blog to educate other divers (and myself) on what I did wrong and how I got into the situation. There is almost never a single event that causes the OOA incident but a series of small events that build to create the catastrophe.

I was lucky in that I had an alternate air source on me and I did not have any issues with the dive besides my primary air source running low. I estimate I had ~150 PSI left im my primary tank. The tank was still pressurized but my computer was not registering a value.

To read my full assessment of the incident along with a couple videos, you can go to my blog post: Overconfidence Always Leads to Trouble

Hopefully my candor and openness with my own incident will help other people prevent future ones.

-Frank
scuba@tyteanalytics.com

 

[Airleron]

Once intentionally: This past weekend I had a short fill for use with my vintage set up: double hose reg, no bc and no spg. It operates best when 2250psi and below. I started out with 1700psi on an al80 and did my shore dive. It was shallow, less than 20 ft deep, so I stayed out (70 minutes) until it started breathing hard. I really wanted to get the feel of what it would be like, so I would recognize the signs of OOA and resolve how to deal with it. Everyone is correct, it comes slowly. The first breath that was a tad harder than the last, I knew. My solution was to drop my weights and surface swim back to the entry point when it became impossible to get any more air. The dropping of the weightbelt didn't go as smooth as I would have liked (it was under my backplate) so the next day, my buddy and I went back to practice that maneuver over and over. I have it down now. I have never accidently been OOA.

 

[TSandM]

Blackwood, thank you for the story. I had a painless wakeup call on the same issue, when I ended up in the water (through a series of errors) with a half-full tank. I dive such large tanks, with such a good SAC rate, that I've gotten quite complacent about gas checking, and often don't do it until we're 20 minutes or so into the dive. This time, when I checked, I was absolutely appalled . . . there was NO way I got a full 130, at the depths and for the time we had dived, to that pressure measurement. It was more than plenty to complete the dive, but it was a really strong check on my situational awareness. That's probably the closest I've come to a true, inadvertent out of air situation, and what saved me was diving a 130 for a 60 foot dive.

 

[Peter_C]

I was bleeding my tank down, by purging my primary reg, to perform a weight check and the air integrated computer still read 600psi. The next breath pulled harder, so I slowly surfaced and manually inflated my BCD. Since I was diving warm water off a boat in Mexico I kept my mouth shut about running the tank down that low. There was a DM next to me, along with other people in the water and we had completed our safety stop. An analog gauge was ordered and installed on a 24" hose clipped off to my left hip. Now I only rely on the analog gauge, and routinely check to make sure it is accurate by checking it on my regulator testing equipment.

 

[islandwheels]

had shot a grouper and he was lodged under a ledge about 90 fsw. pulling hard on the tether but he wouldn't budge, checked my gauge and guess what? it read 0 psi, not good. I'm thinking I might not get this fish, or might even lose the gun, or........., anyway tied safety sausage to gun and sent it up, switched to pony bottle and made ascent and needed stop. Another diver in boat went after gun and got the fish out too!

 

[axxel57]

Yes! Working as an Instructor on the Maledives back in 1995 I used to see that I was able to finish the usual 60 minute dive with al my customers after this one hour ( I didn't like to send them up if not really nessecary).
The air consumtion of each diver in the group (usually 3-8 divers) was pretty different, I dive until today with Octopus and Air II, so as a service at our safety stop ( or ealier) I could provide two clients with air.
So it was not unusual that I ended up with 300-150 psi when exiting the water into the Doni.
One day the last customer exiting the water via the the ladder lost his snorkel he had attached to his BCD.
I saw it falling into the water and tried to grab it, but it sank.
So I had the great idea to follow the snorkel and get it back for my client.
Problem was that I was diving with only one 3lb weight for emergency cases of a customer ( I was used to that), which I had already passed to one of my divers during the safety stop and my tank was pretty light.
I did not check my SPG and headed down. Of course I realized how difficult that was but I was concentrated on getting this stupid snorkel and forced my way down and got pretty exhausted.
Since I'm was to dive with no weights or only very little, I had to exhale very deep.
In the moment I thought I could grab the snorkel in a split of a second I was OOA.
I knew immediately that I was in deep sh....., looked on my computer, saw 19m (60 fsw?), and did a NCESA (NOTCONTROLLEDSWIMMINGASCEND)!!
When I was fighting up I had the feeling that I would pass out, but suddenly the air came back, I looked on my computer and was at about 8m (20 something fsw).
I tried flaring, but of course popped up to the surface, only to realize that nobody on board had noticed my effort to get back that snorkel. Fortunately I later didn't show any sign of Deco sickness.
It was the most stupid thing I have ever done in my quite long diving career.
But at least I learned apart from the fact "You should not fight your way down for a customers stupid snorkel with hardly any air in your tank", that keeping your 2nd in your mouth in a OOA situation can have its benefits, because when you come to about 10m (33 feet) from the depht, you can breath from the remaining approximately 10bars (150psi), which were not enough to support you in greater dephts.......

 

[Blackwood]

One question for the experienced guys.What does a quality balanced reg feel like/sound like when its at the nearly or actually OOA stage?
-I'm thinking maybee in the situation where the gauge is faulty.

I don't recall it sounding any different. It just gets progressively harder to breathe.

It's not like a valve drill where it's suddenly off and you just suck the hose dry... you can feel it coming on, in my case for about 3 breaths in 45ft.

(scubapro mk25)