Should I get a Spare Air?

[MikeS]

Pete,

Sorry that explaining your position makes you nauseous; but after reading your reply I can see why it would. ut: It appears that you’ve decided that pony bottles are a bad thing and are twisting logic to support such a stance. You make a good point that a pony should not be used to extend gas supply; I think that everyone agrees, can we now get over that and move on to the discussion at hand, bailout bottles?

Certainly… More is not necessarily better. Clutter=confusion=stress. Have an extra second stage… which is which?

Lets use your logic and substitute regulator for valve: Where is your training? If you can not select the correct regulator, then you should not be using that equipment.”

This brings up a good point; you shouldn’t just strap on a pony on go diving to 120 fsw, you should train with it first. More of an issue than an additional regulator is as Tec/Wreck pointed out the effect on weighting and trim. You should start out slow on shallow dives and practice deploying the pony regulator. If you stage sling it you should practice handing it off. The first time I practiced handing off the pony was a shock as I watched my buddy sink as I went up; forgot about the 4 pounds of negative buoyancy.

Having more to carry… on the back I have to worry about entanglement and swapping between dives.

I would never carry a pony on my back, stage slinging is the way to go since it places the valve, SPG, and regulator where you can see them and if it becomes entangled you can simply un-hook it.

As a sling (which I have done with bigger tanks) it gets in the way with my mobility, especially while trying to get out of the suds.

While I’ll admit that the stage slung pony is a little awkward out of the water, once in the water if you’re properly weighted and trimmed, you wont even know it’s there.

I would postulate that %99 of all OOAs in the OW environment are from human errors and not from equipment malfunctions. Why then would we throw a hardware solution at a software problem?

The reason for the bailout bottle is not the avoidable 99% of OOAs that are avoidable; it’s the 1% Murphy factor.

Why would we consider something safe when we see it continually abused?

With this logic we would never dive with SCUBA at all, based on the many divers that pay no attention to their air supply, stir up the bottom, dive over weighted, etc., etc.

So, Pete, assuming that a stage slung pony bottle is used strictly as a bail out bottle and the diver trains with it and properly adjusts weight and trim what logical argument do you have against a pony?

Mike

 

[MakoSince70]

I would like to ask the question of why use a spare air or pony bottle from a different perspective.

I use either a spare air or 6 cu ft pony with its own regulator. Not in case I run out of gas, but to suface or reach my buddy in case of an equipment failure. We all know the construction of quality regulators is such that they almost never fail if properly maintained. Which I do to the point of being anal. I am not interested in a pony for extra gas in the event I run out. I am not a technical diver and thus consider the gas on my back all I have available. Over the course of 600 dives I have managed my gas to ensure a safety margin upon surfacing.

I do solo dive (why is another story) and I don't stay within arms reach of my buddy. Many divers don't, so lets not act like they do. I do stay within site of my buddy and we are both concious of each others location. The Pony or sprare air is used to reach a buddy in the event of that equip. failure. I would surface using my partners gas.

So why do I use the small pony? I have this fear of a total equip. failure due to an o ring failure. A 6 cu ft pony will get me to my buddy, or, get me to the surface.
Has anybody ever experienced such an o ring or similar equip. shutdown at depth? Does anybody have the same safety concern, and if so, what precautions do you take?

On a Nov Cozumel trip, the DM's o ring blew at 50', immediately upon decent. He accomplished an accent and commented that his gas was totally expended during the accent. It was the first dive of the day and as I mentioned he had just decended. So there was minimal fear of DCS.

I prefer the pony over the spare air because as previously mentioned, the spare air contains very little air. I will admit I use it mostly for cleaning the pool now and would not recommend it.
The 6 cu ft pony is convinent, takes little wt. modification to keep perfect trim and is easy to change cylinders while on the boat.
However, it is only 6 cu ft. For surfacing from 100 ft, it is a short gas supply to make a 30 ft/min accent and have the safety stop.

I am considering moving up to a 13 cu ft pony. But, I want to keep the equip bulk minimal and my trim perfect.

I dive the Caribbian extensively. Cozumel, Roatan, Bahamas, etc.
Other than the instructors that I sometimes travel with, I rarely encounter another diver with a pony. Hanging at 100' on a Caribbian wall should make a diver think of the what ifs. But, the vast majority rely on their buddy in the event of an out of air situation. I like the comfort---safety margin that a pony adds.

Comments please. Please confine your comments to a recreational, non-overhead environment at a diving depth of 80ft with occasonal dips to 100ft.

 

[The Chairman]

In the hopes of twisting logic even further... splain please...

Why concentrate so much energy for less than %1 of all OOAs? Would it not be better served to spend the time and money to reduce the other %99?

Now, why don't I use a pony? It's the same reason I don't invest in chain mail to stop sharks from biting me, or a locating beacon in case I get lost from the boat. There are far better ways to spend your money... and far better methods to preserving your life. Whenever I am presented a problem, my small illogical mind tries to figure what type of problem it is. In my field, I always see people throwing hardware at a software problem, or software at a hardware problem.

OOA is %99 a software problem... human stupidity, the real Murphy, at work. Usually doing overtime. They forgot to look at their gauges, they lost their buddy, they lost track of time and are now into deco when their gas runs out, they swam into a wreck or cave and got themselves lost... If you think a hunk of aluminum filled with air and a reg attached will make a diver dive smarter, well here's to you. I got a bridge out in Arizona for sale.

 

[Scuba]

NetDoc once bubbled...
Why concentrate so much energy for less than %1 of all OOAs? Would it not be better served to spend the time and money to reduce the other %99?

I understand your point NetDoc. Let me try to answer this question along with a few comments to hopefully get all on the same topic.

Answer to first question is:
Because that 1% is beyond our control and can become terminal.

Second:
Yes, because if someone can't even demonstrate elementary skills, they are as likely to become OOA with one, two, three or whatever number of tanks they carry.

I believe the topic here is about the redundancy that an extra air source can provide and secondary how much is adequate.

If you have a good trusted buddy you have a redundant air source. If your buddy does not fall in this category you may or may not have a backup air source. If you dive solo you definitely don't have one unless you carry another independent air source.

How much redundancy is considered adequate when it comes to a critical aspect of the system who's failure can be catastrophic, one, two, three?

I suppose if the dive is shallow enough where an ascent can be made with the greatest ease you can even consider the surface as your redundant air source. Deeper you probably want at least onother different backup. In some cases even more.

This has nothing to do with correcting "other" problems.

 

[Lawman]

prompted my interest in a bailout bottle.
First I do have access to a SpareAir but
am convinced it isn't for me. Last summer
I was doing a 100' wreck dive.[Niagra
at Tobermory]. I was with 3 other divers.
We were in a small boat and it was rough.
A big boat tied to the bouy. We tied to it w/
20'line. I went first and swam the 2 boats
to the down line. I waited, and waited. I went
to 10' to wait because too rough for snorkle.
By time buddies got there I'd burned some air.
We went down and I ran out first..came up w/
700 lbs and had to swim in rough water to our
boat. I had trouble getting in but finally made
it. I could have used some more air. I went up
alone and didn't have much to spare at 15'.
Just one of those things...and I had a hp100!
I'm going first next time, no more small boats,
and no more rough water.

 

[malammon]

Jumping in kinda late here, but that does not matter since I've heard it all before.

I thought of a wonderful new application for the much maligned Spare Air. Grasp it tightly at the base, hold it over your head, get a bead on the head of any of the multitude of self-rightous, jack-asses on this message board, bring it down on your target with great force (remember to follow through), repeat as necessary.

I wonder if this will get me banned. Oh well, high time I started playing with grown-ups anyway.

 

[WreckWriter]

malammon once bubbled...
I wonder if this will get me banned. Oh well, high time I started playing with grown-ups anyway.

It takes a lot more than that to get banned. Feel free to keep trying though.

WW

 

[metridium]

malammon wrote...
I thought of a wonderful new application for the much maligned Spare Air. Grasp it tightly at the base, hold it over your head, get a bead on the head of any of the multitude of self-rightous, jack-asses on this message board, bring it down on your target with great force (remember to follow through), repeat as necessary.

Applied masochism?

 

[Lawman]

instead of the SpareAir I wear a
BF Goodrich truck innertube around
my waist....with a 2d stage hooked
up to it? I think it might work. However
it will probably take about 87lbs of lead
to get me under.

What would DIR do in this situation?

What would Bill Clinton do?

What would Roy Rogers do? If he
were alive that is.:drown:

 

[Scuba]

Before this degrades into the Me Right - You Wrong typical bunch of BS, I simply like to say that the use of a bailout bottle is simply (or should be) the result of a conscientious choice made by some divers in response to the fact that a catastrophic gas system failure can occur at any time, along with the realization that human error is always possible. However small the chance of occurence may be, some will consider it wise to prepare for this potentially fatal eventually by implementing a greater degree of complexity in their system, which provides the benefit of redundancy.

If you can't see this than you definitely fall in the 99% of cases Net Doc is referring to.

For those who choose this path the biggest issue is getting an adequate size bailout bottle for the type of diving it's intended for. After all, as some have already mentioned, you want to be able to abort the dive in a calmed, controlled, safe mode. Not in emergency mode.