Pony Bottle Location Question

[scubadada]

Another Sling it....Left side.

+1 sling it on the left

 

[Teller]

The extra LP hose can be tucked under a hose retainer or inner tubing and you wont even notice it. Have you tried oral inflation at depth? Have you tried it during a high stress situation such as OOA? Not an ideal situation if you ask me. Swapping a LP hose while on a dive may seem task loading but by far less task loading then controling bouyancy oraly for the remainder of the ascent. I would say try this on your next dive with your buddy within arms reach. Id like to hear about it if you decide to try it. As far as saving your gas in the pony, if a few taps on the inflation button are going to call it that close you need a larger pony.

I did manual inflation for years along with many other divers, it was the norm, nothing special. I don't recall any greater difficulty at depth. I still drill manual inflation along with buddy breathing at least once a year (at 20'). Its not rocket science.

Think about it for a minute. If you have an OOA, you should not need to add any air to your BCD. You should already be neutral and as you start your ascent you are deflating your BCD. If you are using the BCD as an elevator to start ascent you have other issues. Once on the surface you can drop your lead if you want to achieve maximum buoyancy instantly.

Just because your out of air doesnt mean that you are neutraly bouyant. And all I was trying to say is that a $15 LP hose can avoid the issue of inflation all together. I didnt say oral inflation was imposible at depth but I think we can all agree that it is easier to use the power inflator.

 

[PfcAJ]

Fiddling with a power inflator when you're out of gas seems ill advised to me. Use your fins, kick a few times, and up you go. No fiddling required.

 

[Teller]

Fiddling with a power inflator when you're out of gas seems ill advised to me. Use your fins, kick a few times, and up you go. No fiddling required.

I didnt mean to imply that the first thing to do when out of air is fiddle with the inflator. I am simply implying that after the OOA situation is addressed the remainder of the ascent can be completed with ease by having backup inflation.

 

[PfcAJ]

Or just ascend?

 

[markmantei]

Just because your out of air doesnt mean that you are neutraly bouyant.

I don't think the point about neutrally bouyant was due to the lack of air in the tank (as I am possibly incorrectly reading your post), but rather because you should be neutrally bouyant throughout the dive. If that is the case, it is a simple matter of a few kicks to become bouyant, and for the remainder of the ascent you will be venting to control the ascent. No adding of gas neccessary until you surface.

There may be times when you need to add gas to your suit in order to exit, meaning you need to descend before you can reach an exit, but this sounds like overhead environments and not rec diving, but even here my feeling is that the prevailing wisdom would be that the extra hose would be an extra failure point and an entaglement hazard with little to know benefit as you can still manually inflate.

 

[DaleC]

Beware the entanglement risk!

The DS hose is coming off of my pony Oh No. Sooooo much task loading....

 

[spectrum]

This probably should be moved to another thread, but I don't know where---------------

Heavens no, see post #12

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Just because your out of air doesnt mean that you are neutraly bouyant. And all I was trying to say is that a $15 LP hose can avoid the issue of inflation all together. I didnt say oral inflation was imposible at depth but I think we can all agree that it is easier to use the power inflator.

We all agree, cost is not an issue and yes, it is easier to add air with a power inflator. You should be neutral or pretty close throughout the dive (at least on rec dives). If you are negative and OOG, then you have 2 independent issues and you are adding another piece of hardware to address this combination of problems.

If you are using a small back mounted pony your plan should be ascend immediately. Your time at depth to mess with things is severely limited and back mounts often sacrifice easy access to a pressure gauge as well as size. If you sling a big bottle, then the LP hose gets even more complicated.

So the envelope where this might be of use is rather small. If I felt I needed this, then the leap to doubles at that point might be a better solution and I would have a much higher level of redundancy.

 

[DaleC]

We don't all agree.