Nitrox analyzer: to take or not to take?

[jale]

Hi
it is not about whether it is your equipment or not nor about trust.
It is about whether the equipment is safe.
An analyser, whatever yours or not, needs to be calibrated. That's it.
So if you follow the correct procedures, you should be fine.
But it is true that in some place, it is a bit

 

[jgttrey]

Aside from calibration/reliability, it's just better to have your own so you can check your cylinders on your time. I like to analyze right after stowing gear, at a time when the operator is usually helping newbies get settled and it isn't always easy for them to go grab the boat's analyzer. Plus, more than once, the available analyzer is broken, dead batteries, whatever.

I was in Fiji one time and I had the only working analyzer for the entire group, include the operator. It just happens. Stuff breaks. My analyzer ended up analyzing 100+ cylinders over the week and it would have been FUBAR without it.

 

[doctormike]

Yeah, and just to clarify a point made earlier - if I was going somewhere that replacing a broken or missing shop analyzer wasn't something that could be easily managed (e.g. Truk), I would bring mine along as a backup. Three is two, two is one, one is none...

 

[caydiver]

I guess for me it would depend on where I was going. For instance in Mexico I would bring one. Here in Cayman I didn’t for all the years I came as a visitor. Dove with many different ops and they always a working analyzer ready and waiting. Now with an op, we bought a new immediately when ours was taken. We wouldn’t have had guests use the tanks without using one. Different destinations adhere to the guidelines on different levels.

 

[Jake]

Thanks for the info everyone. LeisurePro has the Analox on sale so I decided to pick one up.

 

[Scuba Scott]

It's small, it's light, I already paid for it. Why WOULDN'T I take it?
Mine also measures CO so that means I use it on every tank even if I think I am diving air. On one trip I used it to check my air for CO and found out I had 28%.
If you don't check every tank then you only think you know what you are breathing but you never really know.

 

[Scared Silly]

I always take mine (O2 and CO). Mostly because, I know it and it saves time. In places like Bonaire I even take a pressure gauge. We set up 6+ cylinders for the day in a line. One person records, the other measures. It is a production line and we can be in and out in less than 10 minutes while others are trying to get started.

 

[hroark2112]

Just an additional comment here.

When you get your own, get the BCD adapter for the hose. It makes the process so much quicker and easier, not to mention quieter.

Plus if you’re like me and hate to waste “all that air” testing it without the adapter, you don’t waste that 1/20th of a breath from your tank

 

[Scuba Scott]

When you get your own, get the BCD adapter for the hose. It makes the process so much quicker and easier, not to mention quieter.

The adapter is a great thing! You can pretty much pressurize your regulator and turn the air back off and still have more than enough air to analyze. I am always concerned about purging the air from the hose when using the adapter though so I always inflate the BC a bit first to flush it out.

Do I worry to much about the little things? Probably.
Have I ever regretted it? No.

 

[Stoo]

I just got back from a trip to a very remote location They had one analyzer but it busted the morning we arrived. With no place to get another one, the dude used mine for blending and we all used it for testing our tanks. I ended up leaving it there so he had one.

He should have had a backup, but he didn't. If I hadn't had mine, we'd have had to blow down his storage tanks to zero and refill with air or nobody would have been diving.

For the 6 ounces it weighs, take it. Worst case, it stays in your bag unless you want a "second opinion" on your mix.