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

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In the real world agencies and instructors are not as important as they like to believe. A new diver needs to contact and meet up with the people who are making the dives they’re interested in doing. Determination and perseverance is what’s called for not countless courses and endless instruction
 
../s” after your paragraph is how you write sarcasm @grf88. This thread has been a hoot, see you avatars on the beach. 😂
 
In the real world agencies and instructors are not as important as they like to believe. A new diver needs to contact and meet up with the people who are making the dives they’re interested in doing. Determination and perseverance is what’s called for not countless courses and endless instruction
Absolutely.

A freshly minted diver -- "I'm advanced I am" -- is a liability until they're dived up. You earn your place on the boat through experience not being taught. Teaching is an early phase of experience. Teaching's also overrated. J. F. D. I. and take responsibility for yourself.
 
Here's the deal for you gatekeeping boomers, you're scared — you bring up my background thinking it's some kind of flex but even when I show you all how to calculate minimum gas you're lost. You even dig into my history grasping at your pearls to somehow throw my training into the trash while you hide behind your avatars, I continue to teach more open water classes as a part-time instructor than you do. This entire thread proves that you have no idea what the F you are talking about moreover, while all of you continue to find some kind of hybrid (knees on the deck) model of instruction—I continue to iterate what's best for my students. You hate me because I’m challenging the status quo for a better approach. You say I should be ashamed? You should be—Recreational Diving is a hobby and I’m going to continue building communities and bad ass divers while you sit on the sidelines and teach mediocrity. This website and follow on drivel is an embarrassment to our sport.../s
We don’t (I don’t) hate you. I find you mildly annoying ’cause you make sweeping generalizations based on your LIMITED perspective. You have made some pretty dumb assertions in this thread as if you know more about it than anyone else here. Asserting you are “building communities” and “challenging the status quo” are both hyperbolic and more about ego than diving… LMFAO. Do you wear a red nose while beating the classroom portion of minimum gas calculation into their hides?

I won’t bother with you accreditation because I have just two, NAUI SCUBA DIVER and Nitrox. I did find it funny as **** when you were saying an emergency ascent should take eight minutes from 90 FSW (or some similarly weird assertion, I am too lazy to look it up…). There are a ton of places in the world where ponies are SOP for all divers and just as many where I would be embarrassed to be carrying one. The wearing doubles instead of a pony argument was also hilarious because you never f*cking realized a PONY IS A DOUBLE, except one of them is much smaller…

To hate you would require me to care about your opinions first. Therefore you would need to impress me first, arguing that minimum gas calculations prove you are right in stating a OW shouldn’t NEED a pony assumes anyone certified to dive only above 60’ would A) know how to make those calculations and B) be doing that level of planning when they are probably relying on a dive guide or buddy to remind them which direction the valve stem should be pointing when they are assembling their gear.

If you want to create along thread discussion about a diving practice AND not have a bunch of people decide you are a blow hard, you can. Say something like “hey does anyone dive with an analog depth gauge on their console?” It’s the internet, within an hour people will be ripping each other a new a**hole and not disparaging you. It might not get to be a hundred pages, but it will be lively and you will not get the reputation of a troll.
 
Hartattack:
...emergency ascent should take eight minutes from 90 FSW

[ Think this is a gooist fundies thing: up at 9m/30ft per minute from 27m/90ft to 15m/50ft (2 mins), then one minute per 3m to the surface (6mins) all comes to 8 mins? ]
 
[ Think this is a gooist fundies thing: up at 9m/30ft per minute from 27m/90ft to 15m/50ft (2 mins), then one minute per 3m to the surface (6mins) all comes to 8 mins? ]

I know GUE divers are fit, but breathing out for 9minutes on your emergency ascent when you are out of gas is exceptional!
 
but even when I show you all how to calculate minimum gas you're lost.
I am going to call complete and total BS on this, and it is the most maddening part of this thread.

I think everyone should scroll through 5-6 pages of this thread, roughly pages 5-10. In it you will see that about 75% of my posts repeatedly asked the same question, a question you repeatedly evaded, obviously because you don't know the answer. Here is one of the times I asked it:

This does not answer my question. I asked you WHY divers need to follow a minimum deco ascent profile during an OOA event. What is the reason for it? Please cite references to research indicating that it is necessary to do so in an emergency, not just the opinion of the guy who made it up.
It boils down to this, which I will repeat for the umpteenth time.

For many decades, 99% of dive agencies and experts have believed that during an NDL dive, a diver can go directly to the surface if ascending at a safe rate. For decades, that supposed safe rate was 60 FPM, and today we generally use 30 FPM. That means that just about the entire world thinks it would be safe to bring an OOA diver to the surface from 80 feet in anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes.

You insist in what you say is a GUE belief that it is necessary to take 9 minutes, including multiple stops along the way, to bring that OOA diver safely to the surface. I asked you over and over and over and over to provide the scientific basis for this. Every time I asked you avoided the question while pretending that your non-answer was an answer.

I will openly admit that I asked that question repeatedly because my extensive research on this topic, including direct discussion with GUE headquarters, tells me that there is no scientific basis to this whatsoever. Why do you not admit it?

So, we are not lost by your minimum gas calculations. We just want to know why they are necessary.
 
I know GUE divers are fit, but breathing out for 9minutes on your emergency ascent when you are out of gas is exceptional!

Pffff.... we are trained to stop our breath for at least 15 minutes while rescuing our buddies using only one hand and taking pictures of the surrounding environment for documentation purposes!

Now, according to my basic understanding of GUE system (I am not an instructor nor an experienced explorer!), the principle of this emergency ascent is that, if everything goes as GUE want, in an OOA scenario the OOA diver ascends using the buddy's gas, and the gas is calculated so as to allow a safe ascent at that speed.

That said, one has to use the brain. I had to share gas only once*** in my life because of a free flow regulator, it was a stressful experience, but we were three, with plenty of gas, and the situation was manageable. So we ascended respecting the standard ascent speed. But in a different, hard-to-manage situation, maybe in a team of only two and very far from any deco issue - no way that I am going to ascend that slowly. It all depends on the situation, and the priority is to survive, always.

The point is that GUE approach is meant to avoid these hard-to-manage scenarios, but if (when) **** happens - use the brain :)

***I actually shared gas another time, but it was just to prevent a possibly bad situation, so not really an emergency
 
Remember the 10 ft/min ascent rate is only for calculating MINGAS, not actually for ascending, which is 30 ft/min up to some depth, then and only then slowing.
 
Pffff.... we are trained to stop our breath for at least 15 minutes while rescuing our buddies using only one hand and taking pictures of the surrounding environment for documentation purposes!

Now, according to my basic understanding of GUE system (I am not an instructor nor an experienced explorer!), the principle of this emergency ascent is that, if everything goes as GUE want, in an OOA scenario the OOA diver ascends using the buddy's gas, and the gas is calculated so as to allow a safe ascent at that speed.

That said, one has to use the brain. I had to share gas only once*** in my life because of a free flow regulator, it was a stressful experience, but we were three, with plenty of gas, and the situation was manageable. So we ascended respecting the standard ascent speed. But in a different, hard-to-manage situation, maybe in a team of only two and very far from any deco issue - no way that I am going to ascend that slowly. It all depends on the situation, and the priority is to survive, always.

The point is that GUE approach is meant to avoid these hard-to-manage scenarios, but if (when) **** happens - use the brain :)

***I actually shared gas another time, but it was just to prevent a possibly bad situation, so not really an emergency
So in your gas planning for an NDL dive, do you begin your ascent with enough gas to bring two divers to the surface using the complete min gas procedure, or do you plan for one diver to ascend using that procedure, knowing that if ****happens, using your brain will tell you that you still have oodles of gas--much more than is necessary solve that emergency with a direct ascent?
 

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