Inexpensive Doubles

[Nemrod]

And my dig back, it is not about the gear at all, that is a mistake again on your part (Soggy). It is about purity of experinence, again, the photo I posted conveys that purity of experinece and excitement. Gear, new or old, is simply means to an end and vintage gear to many of us allows for a more intimate experience with the underwater world.

Can anyone tell me why the dive community is overly fascinated with safety? I no longer ride sport bikes due to declining willingness to slide on pavement on my rear but you know I just don't recall safety being all that important as I pulled a 100 MPH stoppie or drug my knee through a corner at warp speed

--what is this all overwhelming safety blah blah all about anyways--who freak'n cares really about safety so much that it comes to be a controlling factor in life. Talk about DIR vs vintage and gear freaks---like the pot calling the kettle black or something. Jeeeeez.

Oh, girls like bad boys, danger is the game, safety is for wimps, live dangerous and die free.

The little zuke there has an overbore kit and custom engine work done by me plus lot's of mods, I have had much, much faster bikes but none could do a stoppie as nice as this one. I sold it to a fellow and he crashed it the next day. He was on leave from Iraq and despite being 21 I made him bring his parents. He threw a fit but came back and bought it with his parents. Well, when he got back from a second tour I helped him fix it back up and that is it there after the --uh--repairs. The paint work is me, the new pipe is Two Brothers.

N

 

[Soggy]

Wow... was that another dig?

No, it wasn't. There wasn't a first dig either. Stop reading into everything.

 

[Soggy]

And my dig back, it is not about the gear at all, that is a mistake again on your part (Soggy). It is about purity of experinence, again, the photo I posted conveys that purity of experinece and excitement.

Umm...that's basically what I said. Did you even read my post? Here it is, again...

All the gear is cool, but it's just a means to an end...the gear itself doesn't really do it for me. (Well, except scooters...they are just freakin cool).

Can anyone tell me why the dive community is overly fascinated with safety?

Because people don't like to die, I would presume.

Talk about DIR vs vintage and gear freaks---like the pot calling the kettle black or something. Jeeeeez.

I didn't say anything about DIR vs vintage. jeez, someone's touchy. I just said that vintage doesn't interest me. Vintage cars, for the most part, don't interest me either.

Relax people, I'm not dissing your interest in vintage gear. I simply said that it was not for me.

 

[fishb0y]

What Nemrod sees ...

Umm...that's basically what I said. Did you even read my post? Here it is, again...

Because people don't like to die, I would presume.

I didn't say anything about DIR vs vintage. jeez, someone's touchy. I just said that vintage doesn't interest me. Vintage cars, for the most part, don't interest me either.

Relax people, I'm not dissing your interest in vintage gear. I simply said that it was not for me.

I say we get the no-trolling rule like the DIR forum:no

 

[Soggy]

What Nemrod sees ...

Apparently...

I say we get the no-trolling rule like the DIR forum:no

Go for it. I wasn't trolling, nor have I criticized anyone here.

 

[fishb0y]

Nor exercising a sense of humor...

 

[Soggy]

Nor exercising a sense of humor...

Ok, you got me there

 

[JohnW]

Just an update and 2 Vanity photo's from Saturday Night Diving. The 72's Trimmed out great( I knew they would).

If my 120's would trim out like this I'd be a very happy camper.

We also did a night dive after this, used my 21w salvo (need to find vintage lighting).

BTW Luis...after seeing the pictures, I'm going to change the valve around. I can see my head touching the top of the Can.

 

[Luis H]

Just an update and 2 Vanity photo's from Saturday Night Diving. The 72's Trimmed out great( I knew they would).

If my 120's would trim out like this I'd be a very happy camper.

We also did a night dive after this, used my 21w salvo (need to find vintage lighting).

BTW Luis...after seeing the pictures, I'm going to change the valve around. I can see my head touching the top of the Can.

Great shots. Nice clear water.

Yeah... the regulator will breath a lot better if it was touching your back were the top of the tanks (where the curved starts) is touching your back in that picture; in other words, between your shoulder blades.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Umm...that's basically what I said. Did you even read my post? Here it is, again...

Because people don't like to die, I would presume.

I didn't say anything about DIR vs vintage. jeez, someone's touchy. I just said that vintage doesn't interest me. Vintage cars, for the most part, don't interest me either.

Relax people, I'm not dissing your interest in vintage gear. I simply said that it was not for me.

Don't worry, Soggy, I'm not worried about what you say here. But I will share a few of my rather old photos. This one is of one of our US Navy School for Underwater Swimmers instructors on our 120 foot qualification dive in 1967:

Note that he is wearing a tee-shirt and his scuba unit, with a life vest for surface use only.

Another photo from that dive, but this diver is using Navy twin AL 90s (not the ones we have today, but the old style that could not be hydroed). Note that he is in perfect balance in the water.

This is a photo of me in Clear Lake, Oregon in the 1970s (about 1974), using a single tank with a Dacor double hose regulator. Do you know how many O-rings I had on my gear for that dive? Two, one that was the tank valve O-ring (which is fairly fool-proof), and one between the tank valve and regulator (which, if it went, usually went when you attached the regulator). The regulator had no O-rings, only jointed seals with rubber diaphragms or gaskets. By the way, the really older gear featured tank valves which were sealed by using teflon tape on a 1/2 inch tapered valve which was screwed into the tank's neck.

I'm telling you this because, with the increased use of O-rings and different types of sealing mechanisms on modern regulators (none of which are "single hose" regulators anymore), there is an increased risk of failure, and redundancy becomes an issue. The other point about redundancy is that the dive shops get to sell you more gear. I have been a safety professional for thirty years now, and the issue with redundancy has to do with diving in "overhead" environments where surfacing is not an option. These environments include:

--Deep, decompression diving.
--Cave diving
--Wreck diving
--Ice diving

But unless you are engaged in one of these activities, if gear fails, you surface. Frederic Dumas used to teach new French divers a swimming ascent from 100 feet, just to show how easy it was, and to give the students confidence in their abilities in the water. That hasn't been the case since the 1960s now, and water skills are constantly being downplayed. With vintage diving, you need to have good water skills, so that you can plan your dive to the depth you go (I was at about 50 feet with that photo in Clear Lake).

In the 1970s some training agencies taught divers to be what some of us called "equipment dependent" divers. If their equipment had a problem, then the diver was in a world of hurt because that diver did not have the water skills to cope with the situation.
_________________________

CatalinaCanuck,

Here is a photo of how the doubles should sit on your back in the water. Dropping them down is not now taught, but those regulators do breath better in the lower position (as Nemrod and Joe have said):

SeaRat