Orange Grove fatality?

[The Chairman]

by 'boom', I assume you mean a burst disk.

Any and every major leak is a "boom". Blown burst disc, leaking high pressure seat, unrecoverable freeflow or extruded o-ring are all booms. A diver has to be prepared to deal with these booms or perish.

Adding a bungeed cap over the valve knobs seems hinky to me. What if it got stuck or jammed?

Roll offs are so easy to prevent. If you touch the ceiling, reach up and check both posts, but especially the left one. Even better, don't touch the ceiling. Both will keep you from having a roll-off. why an additional piece you have to deal with blind.

 

[Caveeagle]

..Adding a bungeed cap over the valve knobs seems hinky to me. What if it got stuck or jammed?

Agreed... but so does a lot of cave diving gear. ....At lease before all the commercially available stuff came on the scene.

Roll offs are so easy to prevent. If you touch the ceiling, reach up and check both posts, but especially the left one. Even better, don't touch the ceiling. Both will keep you from having a roll-off. why an additional piece you have to deal with blind.

I have not used this method. I was just bringing it up as something I have seen. I will say that the comments on this thread (and CDF) make me second guess the risk of roll-offs. "stay off the ceiling and its not an issue". Sure. Of course thats the best option. But things tend to go wrong in multiples. I am just suggesting ways to 'mistake-proof' this. Others with way more experience than me have already mentioned keeping valves pointed inward or upward. There must be a reason for this.

 

[cerich]

[QUOTE="Caveeagle, post: 7782143, member: 469977"

Are we that far removed from the days where Intro divers were required to dive single tank, and grow into doubles during apprentice/full training? I guess I have still not adjusted to times. There really was an era where divers came to cave country to learn skills like doubles and line drills, and then took those skills back home for other types of diving (ie wreck).

For me at least, learning to dive doubles is nothing like sidemount. The variability is not even comparable between gear types and configuration. For these reasons, I don't think learning SM should be done during cavern or cave training. Doubles did not seem like that big of a change for me.[/QUOTE]

to are we that far removed? yeah, I think so. Back then Cave was the ONLY "technical" training, now...not so much. Plus back then society was different (generally) and stuff like rules, patience in advancement etc was more respected. Now we have tech training available globally and people should be showing up to learn CAVE diving with good solid foundation skills (not line drills but stuff like buoyancy, trim, propulsion) so we can teach them...cave diving.

I haven't seen anybody making the argument that SM should be taught during cavern or cave training, but if somebody is trained in it before cavern or cave there is no reason not to teach them cavern or cave in SM.

Once again, SM as a equipment configuration, NOT sidemount as a skill set for major restrictions (which is what a sidemount class was in the old days, now a SM class is just a configuration)

 

[PfcAJ]

which would waste precious time if you had a boom.

Such as? Oh yeah, you don't have to look at those goofy bubbles if something starts leaking. Out of sight, out of mind. It's far easier to turn on and off valves behind you rather than in front of you. It's always easier to walk into the water with twice the weight. It's def easier to exchange a single tank with back mounted doubles on. Finally, how do they do resolve booms with only two valves? That's got to be chaotic. [/sarcasm]

But really, what additional options? What benefits, other than you've always done it that way? What am I missing?

A manifold gives you access to *all your gas* when you shut down a post due to a failure like this:

With independents you cannot access that tank's gas. You're down to whatever left in the other tank. Fingers crossed its enough to get out.

 

[cerich]

A manifold gives you access to *all your gas* when you shut down a post due to a failure like this:

With independents you cannot access that tank's gas.

wanna bet?

 

[PfcAJ]

wanna bet?

Yeah lemme guess youre going to try and suck air off a hose nubbin or try to swap regs underwater.

Great for the pool. Not so much for real life.

 

[rjack321]

For me at least, learning to dive doubles is nothing like sidemount. The variability is not even comparable between gear types and configuration. For these reasons, I don't think learning SM should be done during cavern or cave training. Doubles did not seem like that big of a change for me.

This is a significant difference IMHO. You could got to FL as a single tank diver and go back to NJ or wherever as a cavern, intro and doubles diver - to dive wrecks and overall get more experience.

Nowadays we have people reading about how great sidemount is. Getting "trained" by their local padi front mount diver who has no cave training at all. Then showing up in FL and taking cavern and intro in "sidemount". Possibly having some of their SM issues fixed but still being iffy overall. Then in the mistaken impression that their SM rig avoids all those nasty drawbacks of backmount gets way in over their head on non-intro dives with a full cave buddy. And ends up perishing on a dive with gas remaining, a "gas failure" that is supposedly impossible in sidemount (at least based on their impressions and one of the reasons SM is mistakenly popular)

I don't think having the expectation that divers show up solid in their chosen configuration is unreasonable. Its just that its way faster and easier to get someone solid in backmount. Which allows their cave training to be more thorough.

 

[mdb]

Side mount the latest evolution of "tech".

 

[rjack321]

Side mount the latest evolution of "tech".

Unfortunate but yup.

big money maker with a whole bunch of newly minted instructors and forums propagating misleading claims about being "safer", what could go wrong?

 

[cerich]

Yeah lemme guess youre going to try and suck air off a hose nubbin or try to swap regs underwater.

Great for the pool. Not so much for real life.

I have switched regs in real life... actually even did with BM and a deco reg once in open water at a stop on drift deco. SM is stupid easy to switch a reg