@MaxBottomtime I'm using the more old fashioned definition of criticism (like a movie or art critic). I'm not saying I'm being insulted or attack (some people have, but I don't mind), I'm saying people are making comments about the quality of my plan, which is exactly what I came here for. My only complaint is the lack of reasoning accompanying many such comments and the fact that some are responding to a plan that is not mine. Other than that, why does using the pony make it not redundant? As far as I'm aware, I'm redundant as long as I have two tanks/regs that work, with enough gas in them to turn the dive and surface. But, as you said, I don't know what I don't know. Is there a reason using my pony (in exactly the same way a twinset diver would use independent twins, just smaller) makes it not redundant?
@LI-er I appreciate the support, and good job summing up what I'm doing. There seems to be some confusion. Question about the way you do things: Is it not potentially bad for a tank to drain it below 500 psi? I heard that it was, and so leave a fairly padded reserve in mine, but people say lots of things, and I'm not certain of the science/reasoning behind it. Would draining a tank to 200 psi be worse than draining it to 500, for the tank's lifespan/longevity?
@Tom_Ivan Good advice on the spg, hadn't thought about that. My main spg is a three gauge console, and I'll probably put a 2 inch SPG single gauge on the pony, so that should do the job, don't you think? And yeah, I actually planned to take the pony out in a nearby lake (still water, land within easy swimming distance, diving off a buddy's dock) to test how fast I drain the pony, then definitely give it a wide margin of error until I'm certain about consumption rates.
As for my weighting habits...I dive neutral/slightly negative when doing "sightseeing dives" like when I dove a wreck in a local lake, but for river dives, my goal is to remain securely on the bottom throughout the entire dive, until ascending. My bcd is completely empty from the time I go under until I'm ready to surface, and then I add a small amount of air (perhaps a total of 1 second pressing the inflator, in short bursts) to make me less negative, and then fin my way to the surface. I usually reach the surface still negative, and fully inflate there. I don't love being so heavily weighted (it's definitely a pain on the surface, if nothing else) but I find the current becomes hard to manage without the extra weight, since it will sweep you off the bottom. Thoughts/advice, given all that?
@happy-diver ...I'm not even sure what the joke is here. And perhaps you didn't understand the math, but the point of that formula was to say, if there's a 5% (random number I made up) chance of failure, with one tank your chance of dying is 0.05, which with two tanks/regs, it's 4*0.05*0.05=0.01. This was in response to another diver's comment about two tanks being a higher chance of failure. I'm willing to hear anybody out, but if you continue to add nothing of value to the conversation, I'm going to stop responding.
