Recreational Pony Bottles, completely unnecessary? Why or why not?

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Yoke valves. Enough said.
:vomit:

Perfect reason for taking a Pony.
Or an Y or H or reversed T double valve with 2 separate first stages. Din, of course, as on my tank...
 
I don’t have a problem with people carrying a pony, but its for their own benefit not a buddy. I’m not buying the Mother Theresa bit like it’s for someone else.
My pony is for me, period.
Piss
Off
Not
Yours

But if I see a diver, on any dive I am on, and they are in distress, coming towards me signaling out of air; the first thing they are looking for is a yellow octo. I will gladly share with a diver in need, especially if they are not my buddy.
 
Was this in Florida? While I have not dived any wrecks there, I have heard of some rather wicked currents, so I can envision this. I can't see this happening in the artificial reefs in BC where I had done my recreational wreck course many moons ago.
Did you get to dive the Columbia, near Campbell River ? I watched that one sink.
 
Did you get to dive the Columbia, near Campbell River ? I watched that one sink.
No. I might be on VI in January, but I plan to dive in the Victoria area.
 
... well you better plan on a dive or 2 with me. We can dive with Jay and when I reach my limits, and you guys have tons of gas, I can solo up.
I'm perfectly content with hour long, no deco dives.
 
No. It is not hard to control whether I am endangered by their reaction if I need gas. Carry a pony, after gaining the comfort in the water to make that easy. No need to stay home for safety.
Except that there is no evidence that it will make you safer. We are in theology territory here. I already provided real life emergency situations where it did not help or it was actually root cause of a incident. I do not see any examples from counter arguments, just, assumptions.
What kind of measures do you take when driving your car and any other driver can potentially kill you? Wouldn't a helmet make sense?
The drag of a pony sidemounted under my armpit, in my slipstream, causing me to over breath my reg, causing a CO2 hit and thus making me the liability is over blown. Also, if the water is such my regs could freeze, I should have better gear and redundancy anyway.
Slipstream? :). Please have a look at this Basics knowledge before talking about Monofin Technique. Seriously..
Regarding co2, my sister with her 800 dives had an incident in Socorro with co2. She was diving in rough conditions she is used to, only difference is just a bigger camera rig. She literally removed her mask to breath better and after realizing that does not work, she was not able to clear it. Now she thinks anyone can die in any scuba dive.


By better divers, I did not mean to include 'better' by the act of carrying a pony. As whether ponies are useful is the debate at hand. I meant in their skills and their calm and deliberate reaction to small incidents in the water. Diving would be safer if all divers were much better in that way.

I am better in that sense. All divers I am with are not. And they may not be able to provide me with effective assistance. So I ensure I'm fairly self-reliant.

Yes, if we are in 10' on a clear calm beach, I will have assessed the dive conditions and I'll leave the pony ashore. I'm just trying to keep the discussion a bit simpler. The beach is not the large variable of interest here. My unknown dive buddy is.

Ensuring self-reliance does not imply lack of dive planing. Arguing that it does is bizarre.
I am wondering where I argued self reliance is bad. I am pointing out equipment reliance is not making things better. If every scuba diver could free dive half of their certified depth, how would that effect their self reliance and confidence. It is only 15m for an AOWD, anyone can hold their breath for 30 seconds. I often get average depth of 15 meters when doing recreational diving even max was 30-40m. This means in average I am within the range of the surface..

Pony is a strange animal stuck between dog and a Arabian horse, this is the reason most of the experienced folks rarely use. When I lived in Finland, I dove single 8l 300b in summer and d7 300b in cold weather. I could potentially use a pony during crossover period but that is too narrow of a time to even bother.

Anyway, both pony and solo diving was discussed to death in the past, it is pointless to continue for me on this and I support neither pro nor contra. I wonder whether there is another industry run so much on fear mongering; 20+ years ago nitrox/o2 was dangerous, then solo diving was dangerous and now buddy diving is dangerous.
 
My pony is for me, period.
Piss
Off
Not
Yours

But if I see a diver, on any dive I am on, and they are in distress, coming towards me signaling out of air; the first thing they are looking for is a yellow octo. I will gladly share with a diver in need, especially if they are not my buddy.
They can get all the air they want on the surface, without any need to look for it. If you can’t find your buddy surface.
 
My pony is for me, period.
Piss
Off
Not
Yours

But if I see a diver, on any dive I am on, and they are in distress, coming towards me signaling out of air; the first thing they are looking for is a yellow octo. I will gladly share with a diver in need, especially if they are not my buddy.
I have a different philosophy. If I am on a dive and see that another diver needs air, they can get it from me. If I do not have a pny, I will do a standard air share and accompany them to the surface. If I have a pony and it somehow (????) becomes expedient for them to use it, I might even give it to them.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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