Soggy:
If you are diving in conditions where you are far enough from the surface that you cannot do a direct ascent and you are in such poor vis that you can't see your buddy who has somehow just disappeared in a wicked current, and your lights are so poor that you can't see the glow from your buddy in that terrible vis you should either be diving doubles or not doing the dive at all.
So in other words, diving with a redundant air source. Which for shallow depth can also include a pony which would have more than enough air to get you to the surface. No different from a twinset. Same thing, different name. Im glad you agree they have a use.
The words blindly rely prove the point that you have never dived in a squared away team. Once you have, you'll understand that a good teammate *will* be there.
Great so in a perfect world you only dive with perfect buddies who you've obviously subjected to a battery of psychological, physical and mental aptitude tests on the surface to ensure they can respond under all conditions in an absolutely perfect way. The last time i checked the world wasnt perfect. People behave differently under pressure, not everyone can be 100% perfect 100% of the time. People also have to learn to improve. Your method of only diving with these mythical perfect divers is great except it means immediately there is no diving with anyone else so therefore nobody learns, trains or improves as they cant get the experience.
You go abroad with the family and then cant dive as the perfect buddy didnt come ready fitted in your suit case and so on.
Very inflexible. Yes its safe but its far from practical for everything.
How exactly are instructors meant to function? Someone doing a training course may not be fully rescue trained, may not be perfect, may not have had 10 years of aptitude tests to be certified as perfect. Should the instructor refuse to dive with these people? Refuse to dive to give these people experience purely because they may not be totally relied on to rescue him? Or should he just use a redundant air source like a pony?
Even if i did have one of these always there perfect buddies that followed me on every dive in every country id still want a redundant air supply. It gives me one more option to deal with whatever the ocean throws at me.
Obviously there are circumstances where redundancy is necessary. I dive doubles on pretty much anything below 60-80 ft in cold water, which is pretty much everything these days. I haven't had a single tank on in several months.
Nice if you have that option. I know people here that dive twinsets all the time. However they do work out expensive and for small boat/rib diving arent always practical. You'd be really frowned on trying to cram 4 cylinders (as youd need 2 twinsets, one for each dive) onto a small boat when everyone else has 1 x 15l for each dive and so on. A pony is a more compact way of providing redundancy on a dive where a twinset is either not essential or viable. Its great for shallow depths.
The issues with pony bottles are numerous.....If you store them parked and off, you need to find, deploy, turn on, and clear the reg...all while you are freaking out because your regulator just blew up in your face or your just took your last breath.
No different from isolation and valve drills on a twinset. Especially if the pony is side slung like a stage. Very easy to turn a valve on.
If you store it deployed and turned on, you might very well go to grab the reg and not have anything there, because unbeknownst to you, the reg has been leaking the entire dive and dumped your 20cft of 'redundancy' out.
Thats why someone invented SPGs. Yes you may argue its a failiure point but its a VERY rare failiure point. People diving independent twins also have to deal with that issue. Its no different to stage tanks which also have one.
Additionally, if you are at all trained to dive with high-O2 deco mixes, the whole concept of fumbling around blindly for a reg and breathing it should seem absurd.
Why would you fumble around blindly for a reg? If the kit is set up properly and well practiced theres no issue there.
It engrains habits that need to be 'forgotten' when you are carrying a deco mix. With doubles, the reaction is always the same....problem with the reg I'm breathing? Switch to the one on my neck, shutdown the post, notify buddy.
Same with a pony. Problem with reg? I'll just switch to the pony reg around my neck, notify buddy.....
Once you've come to the conclusion that you need redundancy, the best option is doubles with a squared away dive team.
In a perfect world with that perfect buddy yes. As i said though, its incredible inflexible, very elitist and limits diving oppertunities and other peoples learning ability. Twinsets are fine below a certain depth. Shallower though and a pony accomplishes exactly the same thing in a smaller and equally as effective package.
but it was meant to be serious (or at least a serious speculation)
