Rec Diving a Pony

[HKGuns]

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Huh?

 

[loosenit2]

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

define the wrongs..

 

[KenGordon]

Huh?

Here we have a recreational diver considering enhancing his personal safety and reducing his dependency on others by adding a pony.

There is a recommendation to not just remove his octopus, but also change to primary donate. Sounds like a mess to me. If I wanted gas would I take the octopus as trained? Now I get a useless necklaced reg. He can’t hand off the pony, is the primary a long hose? What are we doing here but creating a random mash up?

 

[KenGordon]

define the wrongs..

The lack of a proper AS and unnecessary primary donate, there being no advantage to it without a proper long hose primary.

 

[tbone1004]

Here we have a recreational diver considering enhancing his personal safety and reducing his dependency on others by adding a pony.

There is a recommendation to not just remove his octopus, but also change to primary donate. Sounds like a mess to me. If I wanted gas would I take the octopus as trained? Now I get a useless necklaced reg. He can’t hand off the pony, is the primary a long hose? What are we doing here but creating a random mash up?

you are in an extremely small portion of divers that are trained to take the secondary...As in statistically insignificant *not to say that BSAC is irrelevant, but the percentage of divers they train compared to the rest of the industry is truly insignifcant

to clarify. BSAC has somewhere around 30,000 total members. PADI alone has almost 200k professional members and issues over 1m certifications every year... Let's not make this into another discussion about BSAC has procedures the rest of the world doesn't use and because of that you would revert to your training that is different than everyone else. Mine is also different than everyone else because I was trained from day 1 for primary donate and have never been trained in any procedure.

 

[markmud]

But why?

That means I have to either change my kit over every time I switch from solo to non-solo diving or I have to always bring my pony even when diving with a competent buddy. I prefer one standard kit I always wear and when solo I add a pony in the very rare instance I have a gas emergency. Far simpler and cleaner to me.

If I'm alone and I have a massive regulator failure or my tank neck o-ring blows (both extremely unlikely but possible), I'm not going to get confused, switch to the backup under my neck and drown. In that event I will deploy my pony. Something I've practiced at least 50 times if not more.

I really don't see the point of dropping the octo when solo diving.

Hi Jim,

You and I are in the same proverbial boat. I can't add anything to your point so I won't. We would probably have a good time diving together.

Dive and let Dive. I have nothing against T-Bone's, Ken's or any other SBer's points or methods that are opined on this thread, they just aren't for me.

cheers,
m²v2

 

[loosenit2]

The lack of a proper AS and unnecessary primary donate, there being no advantage to it without a proper long hose primary.

pretty big leap there. One I never said no long hose; two many, especially on SB, would argue that primary donate is a superior system; hence the endless debate about it.

 

[Kharon]

correct. If you're diving with a pony, then you should have 2 first stages and 2 second stages.

+1

 

[Lostdiver71]

I know this will be a blasphemous answer to many... but when diving a more streamlined configuration, I use an air2/longer primary. When I sling the pony, I just keep the regulator in a little elastic loop next to the valve. Makes it quite easy to deploy as needed, keeps a consistent configuration when not using a pony, doesn't add a 3rd 2nd stage floating around for confusion of the ooa buddy.

I use the same configuration!

 

[CWK]

I use a pony. 2 first stages n 2 second stages for me.

The fundamental flaw in scuba diving is the octopus. Putting your alternate air source on someone else is a defective solution for an OOA situation.