Spare Air

[SparticleBrane]

I'm glad someone else enjoyed those testimonials as much as I did.
"My PADI training saved my butt! Although, it didn't tell me how to exit the wreck with less than 300psi inside my tank. Wait, why was I doing a wreck penetration anyway?"

 

[TheRedHead]

Everyone is so down on PADI. I've got certs from 5 different agencies, including PADI, and I take abuse from everyone. :lol:

 

[SparticleBrane]

I've got certs from 5 different agencies

You card collector you!

 

[Diver Dennis]

As I have posted before, a good instructor from any agency can make you an excellent diver. On the other hand, a poor instructor can mutilate a good course outline and produce poor divers. It's the instructor, not necessarily the agency that produce good divers.

Yes, I was certified by PADI many years ago with a terrific instructor.

 

[lamont]

Lamont: I have the greatest respect for your insights, especially vis-a-vis gas management However, I respectfully disagree with you on Spare Air. If a pony will keep me alive then, subject to volume issues, so, too, will a Spare Air. And, for the depth at which I usually dive, 3 cubic feet is enough.

I agree that one's buddy's tank should be one's pony and that a buddy should not be more than a moment away. And, I agree that one should practice OOA drills. I even agree that unless one has practiced grabbing a Spare Air, one will probably fail to deply it in an emergency. So, yes, absent adequate practice, it promotes overconfidence and thus, nothing might be better. But, doesn't having a slung 40 also promote overconfidence and won't switching to it be a problem for someone who is faced with an emergency and has not practiced the requisite skills?

If you're diving at 30 feet, though, you don't need a spare air because you have easy access to the surface and you're atypical for the customer. If you look at the testimonials on the spare air site its all people diving at 100 feet. Advertising it as a solution to emergencies at 100 feet for the average diver like that I would actually consider to be ethically wrong on the part of the company that sells it.

And slug ponies are easy to deploy -- you grab the reg, yank, stuff in mouth and crank on the valve. It all starts out right in front of you, so the possibility of failing to deploy it is minimized. If you've got a spare air zipped inside a pocket somewhere, I would not be that confident, particularly for the average recreational diver that puts the spare air there and never attempts to deploy it.

And even if you do manage to deploy it successfully then you've still only got 3 cu ft of gas which goes in under a minute at 100 fsw if you're excited (and any minor fumble on trying to unzip your pocket to get at the spair air while your backgas is exhausted and you can't breathe will probably jack the heartrate right up no matter how good you are).

And I wrote *very* specifically that 95% of divers would fail that test. I was certain that someone on scubaboard has a spare air that they use only for shallow depths, that they commonly practice with, and where they have enough experience to be able to deploy it calmly and immediately move towards the surface and use it to slow down a rapid ascent. Most divers do not practice, and are not skilled enough to do anything more than get it in their mouth, fail to make the decision to ascend immediately and then run out of gas again. And really I'm not saying like its trying to take down a bear with a pellet gun because the diver is a large part of the problem. Maybe its like a blind person trying to take down a bear with a pellet gun -- and there could be some sharpshooter that can send the pellet through the bear's eye and into his brain and kill him, but that still doesn't make it a good idea to sell pellet guns to blind people to kill bears.

And bears are, of course, godless killing machines...

 

[SparticleBrane]

And bears are, of course, godless killing machines...

They are ON NOTICE!
...and so is SpareAir.

 

[lamont]

Is this refering to a spare air or the regulator strapped to a slung pony? It sounds like it would fit either. Same logic process gets you to believing nothing is better than a buddy? So is the answer DIR or golf? Even DIR is not foolproof and then there is "fore".

Unfortunately, like so many anti-DIR posts, I never said that, and you're putting words in my mouth.

A slung pony is a gear config which i know is going to be consistantly realiable to deploy (much better than trying to hunt in a pocket for a spare air). And once the diver has deployed a pony bottle they will have substantially more time to crap their pants on the bottom and let their brain vapor lock for a moment before they move shallower. The spare air simply provides no margin of error and will just promote running out of air on the bottom twice for 95% of divers.

And I don't claim a slung pony is the only way to achieve the same thing as well. Obviously I dive doubles and thats better in my opinion. A backgas mounted pony with an SPG, an accessable valve, and a bungeed necklace is another gear config that I can't find anything wrong with offhand, other than you can't hand off the pony. Someone out there may have figured out a bulletproof way of deploying a spare air and be trained and experienced enough to use it to leave the bottom immediately. There's a whole large universe of possibilities, but in the typical case the spare air is going to be a piece of **** that only served to get a diver in over their head, whle a slung pony is going to have a much higher chance of producing the benefits of redundancy and an independent gas source in the more average diver.

 

[lamont]

They are ON NOTICE!
...and so is SpareAir.

Air-2s are on notice.

Spare Airs are dead to me.

 

[HowardE]

I agree with Lamont. I don't dive with a pony or a spare air. But a slung pony or a mounted pony sounds much safer, if you're going to use one or the other.

But I think the spare air would provide a false sense of security for someone who is thinking they can DEPEND ON IT at 100 feet, as claimed by the company.

 

[lamont]

But I think the spare air would provide a false sense of security for someone who is thinking they can DEPEND ON IT at 100 feet, as claimed by the company.

Yeah, and for the small minority of people on scubaboard that can use a spare air without getting hurt, that doesn't change the fact that the company selling it to the general recreational diving audience (particularly the once-a-year warm water vacation divers) as a solution to diving to 100 fsw is really amoral and unethical in my view. They should stick with advertising it as a helicopter rescue product and let divers who seek it out buy one, but instead they're just advertising to increase their profit margins with no real concern over how their product is used...