OOA with free-flowing reg

[JeffG]

If it occurred to your OOA buddy to do that in his state of mind.....

How would you suggest communicating that?

A couple of hand signals. If they didn't get it the first time, they probably are not in the mood to do any task loading. If he/she wasn't freaking out they might even initiate it. This wouldn't be something you have a big meeting on. Its time to leave...regardless.

Feathering is only asking for a CF

Maybe...maybe not. Watching your gas leave...the noise...that could freak a person out as well. I hope to never to find out what I would do.

In a three man team <snip>

A true benefit of a three diver team

 

[artw]

Assumptions: Recreational open water, no overhead, no deco
let's say for example the buddy pair is using a set of 104's with let's say 32. if they are following the above assumptions chances are, even at the turn point, they still have buckets of gas to get out, even with the free flow

afterthought.
at 110 feet how long would it take to freeflow 2000psi out of a set of 104's?.
I am just thinking time. All you guys are suggesting it could take time to sort out this cf. well lets figure out how much time we actually got.

 

[Diver0001]

A couple of hand signals. If they didn't get it the first time, they probably are not in the mood to do any task loading. If he/she wasn't freaking out they might even initiate it. This wouldn't be something you have a big meeting on. Its time to leave...regardless.

I'm glad I blundered into this thread. This is a situation I've never practiced. My first instinct was to assume that if you didn't shut down the FF that you'd all be dead in a couple of minutes, which lead to the "obvious" looking conclusion that it was share the secondary or nothing..... which gets complicated. Probably anyone who has taken a technical specialty has been taught about feathering and I've seen it applied on a real world deco dive with success (regulator on my buddy's 50% bottle packed it in when he turned it on at 18 metres). Feathering is clearly a way to have your free flow and breathe it too.... This situation would have a pretty high pucker factor no matter how you deal with it but the other tracks you get on by either not shutting it down and letting it flow or shutting it down completely and trying to make due with the secondary are going to get you into potentially more difficult "convolutions" to use Jeff's word.

R..

 

[Spectre]

at 110 feet how long would it take to freeflow 2000psi out of a set of 104's?.
I am just thinking time. All you guys are suggesting it could take time to sort out this cf. well lets figure out how much time we actually got.

Testing done by Curt Bowen resulted in an AL80 draining in 155 seconds @ 99', 255 on the surface and 91 @ 231'.

Ok. Now that I'm involved in this discussion....

If you want to discuss this, step back. You're going on the given that one diver is out of gas and the other diver is freeflowing. Well, you're already onto CF #2. What got the first diver out of gas in the first place. _START_ at the first problem and play out from there.

Otherwise why not just step a little further. You have 2 divers with zero gas, what do you do?

My point. You're going from normal dive to multiple CF instantly, without it taking a logical and probable path. I can think up a multitude of scenarios were the resulting outcome is 'your dead'. You have to run scenarios from the beginning and go from there. You don't instantly run out of gas... so what happened to have that diver run out of gas in the first place?

So with that said. If they "Just ran out of gas", can you truely trust them to deal with the freeflow issue, or do you need to take complete and absolute control of the situation, as you would for a toxing diver?

 

[lamont]

I think I should make it clear what situation we're talking about here, since some of the replies seemed like they've got some confusion. We've got one OOA diver (no gas, no working regs) who signals to his buddy and is handed a free-flowing reg on the long hose, buddy has a necklace reg.

Clearly, the OOA should not happen due to bad gas management, first. However, we do train to handle OOAs, and this is a situation which came up on a skills practice dive when we were doing OOAs and I got handed one which was free-flowing. Even if this CF shouldn't ever happen for real with my tank dry, I'd still like to know how to handle it...

Mer brought up the obvious point that a three-person team means the OOA victim can go on the other long hose while the FF person manages their CF, which is the most elegant and DIR way to solve this. I'm still interested in the two person solution since I often dive that way, even though it may no longer be a question which is appropriate for the DIR forum...

 

[Charlie99]

this is a situation which came up on a skills practice dive when we were doing OOAs and I got handed one which was free-flowing.

Lamont, was the reg already freeflowing in the donors mouth, or is it simply a case of the reg's mouthpiece being turned up during the exchange and a freeflow starting?

I'm trying to make sense of the situation. If it's just a low cracking pressure reg freeflowing from being pointed up,then the action is to flip it down, stick your thumb in in it, and stop it before it turns into a real freeflow.

Of course, if this is a training scenario, then you'll probably lose your mask around this time too

 

[lamont]

Lamont, was the reg already freeflowing in the donors mouth, or is it simply a case of the reg's mouthpiece being turned up during the exchange and a freeflow starting?

reg started to free-flow during the handoff. clearly there are some issues that could get addressed there, as well. a little bit more cracking pressure on the reg and handing it off pointing down would do a lot to prevent the CF from happening at all.

I'm trying to make sense of the situation. If it's just a low cracking pressure reg freeflowing from being pointed up,then the action is to flip it down, stick your thumb in in it, and stop it before it turns into a real freeflow.

yeah. spectre may jump in and rightly point out that i'm going *way* down the 'what-if' CF scenarios here, but it could be cold water (32-40F) and the free flow could ice up the first stage so it doesn't stop.

also with the gas blowing out and obstructing what I could see, and the drygloves reducing my dexterity and feeling, I had a hard time stopping the free flow.

Of course, if this is a training scenario, then you'll probably lose your mask around this time too

=)

 

[JeffG]

Lamont, was the reg already freeflowing in the donors mouth, or is it simply a case of the reg's mouthpiece being turned up during the exchange and a freeflow starting?

I'm trying to make sense of the situation. If it's just a low cracking pressure reg freeflowing from being pointed up,then the action is to flip it down, stick your thumb in in it, and stop it before it turns into a real freeflow.

Of course, if this is a training scenario, then you'll probably lose your mask around this time too

Not to speak for Lamont, but I'm guessing the real situation was that the second reg freeflowed when handed off (usually because it was handed off wrong and/or at too high of a speed...Not that I would know from experience...on no...not me...)

Which then lead to this "What if" thread...which in the worst case scenario would be a first stage freeflow.

 

[Laser]

I think I should make it clear what situation we're talking about here, since some of the replies seemed like they've got some confusion. We've got one OOA diver (no gas, no working regs) who signals to his buddy and is handed a free-flowing reg on the long hose, buddy has a necklace reg.

Diving singles or doubles?

 

[lamont]

Diving singles or doubles?

we were both in doubles in the excersize we were doing. trying to think it through in the situation in single tank rec diving (which is much more likely to happen) has been a little enlightening though...