Spotting for a valve drill

[FishTaco]

slightly related thoughts / scenario questions...

1 - i may, depending on circumstances, have my backup in my mouth & primary in my hand while watching valve drills

I see no advantage to this method.

Also,
Lynne, you should pop in your back-up reg right after the primary hose has been deployed. Don't wait until the OOG diver is breathing off your primary.

Chris

 

[ianr33]

Another point that I feel is extremely important is...where the heck is your backup reg? The purpose of a bungie'd backup is so that it is ALWAYS accessible.


If your backup reg is sometimes MIA at the beginning of a dive, can the same thing occure later on in the dive? You stated that you don't know why it gets pulled off to the side. It might be worth while to find out.

Totally agree with this. The point of the bungeed back up is that you know exactly where it is. If it is sometimes "off to the side" seems to me that something is wrong with the setup and needs to be fixed.

Turning the primary off due to a burst hose or whatever,going for the backup and not finding it could be a real bad day. Glad you found this problem during a drill !

 

[limeyx]

slightly related thoughts / scenario questions...
...
i'm watching buddy b, so who's watching buddy c?? nobody. he had done a fine job, but that's not the point. so please, if you're performing drills, your spotter is there for a reason. take them seriously & expect them to take you seriously.
...

Um, you were watching b *and* c, right? in a team of three, there are two others to watch -- what if c had had a buoyancy problem during b's bag shoot?

 

[BabyDuck]

that's just it. i was watching b, who had signaled 'watch me as i shoot this bag', but had no idea c was shooting one. c didn't tell me, and i thought he was just hovering quietly.

 

[rjack321]

that's just it. i was watching b, who had signaled 'watch me as i shoot this bag', but had no idea c was shooting one. c didn't tell me, and i thought he was just hovering quietly.

But he/she was part of your team. You can't just focus on the teammate who demanded attention...

 

[rjack321]

Well, actually, what I was taught about OOA drills is to make the donating gesture and make sure the OOA diver has taken the reg and put it in his mouth before seeing to my own backup. After all, one should be able to hold one's breath for at least 45 to 60 seconds, and it doesn't take that long to ensure everything has gone smoothly. On the other hand, if you drop your eyes to see to your own reg, you may miss something not going well for your buddy.

Clipping off the dead regulator in the valve drill can probably wait until after I've secured another working source of air, though. It just seemed like an easy gesture, to take the reg out of my mouth with my right hand and just clip it off. It wasn't hard to find and unclip when I needed it, either; it took longer to turn the post enough turns to have a good air supply.

On tonight's dive, I worried my buddy with a bag shoot -- I spent so much time with the reg out of my mouth while I organized the bag, spool and line that he had his reg ready to donate. But I was fine -- just a bit disorganized.

I thought your backup necklace might have been a bit long last night.

And the reg switch in the valve drill should be the same as for donating to a buddy. Right hand donates then left hand puts the backup in the mouth - one smooth two-handed motion without looking down to find it (since you should know where it is)

I should have mentioned this then, but I think you might have clipped off the primary and then put your backup in your mouth with the right hand.

 

[TSandM]

I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure what I'm doing.

 

[DeepBound]

If I were you, what would scare me about this situation is that your backup wasn't where it was needed. This isn't just a valve drill problem, it's also a problem with not being able to find your backup regulator, which could apply in many scenarios. I hope you get that issue fixed up.

 

[nereas]

I had an interesting experience last night that I wanted to share.

I was doing a valve drill, with my buddy watching. The drill started with a mistake -- I didn't purge my backup reg before I shut off the supply to the primary. I closed my right post, breathed the primary reg down, and took it out of my mouth and clipped it off. I reached for my secondary . . . and I couldn't find it. (Sometimes it gets pulled off to the side, I don't know why.) I groped around my neck and right shoulder, came up with the turned off primary reg, reached up behind my neck and grabbed the long hose . . . Anyway, the long and short of it was that I reached a point where I was going to need something to breathe and still hadn't found the secondary reg, which later turned out to be sitting on top of my right shoulder.

My buddy was now a little off to my side, and I don't know this person very well (never dove with him before), so I made the decision to turn my right post back on and just resume using my primary reg, rather than signal OOA. I was able to do that, but I was awfully glad to get the reg back in my mouth when I did.

When we debriefed the dive, I asked my buddy if he had seen what happened, and he said no. He said he was watching what I was doing with the valves, not what I was doing with my mouth. Pretty clearly, he was being vigilant to make sure I didn't turn off both posts, which is great.

But my point in posting the story is that any number of things can go wrong when you are doing a valve drill. One should ALWAYS confirm the availability and function of an alternate air supply before shutting down a post. It's not a trivial part of the drill. And when someone is deliberately shutting off their air supply, the person spotting really needs to be watching everything that's going on. This is another place where I think it's possible to get too comfortable because of doing drills all the time, and I'm sure I'm guilty of not being as carefully observant as I ought to be when my very facile buddy is twiddling with his valves.

That is exactly why it is not a good idea to "breathe down" a reg.

Better to switch first, then shut down.

There will need to be a major accident or two, before this correction is made in those training agencies that teach the breathing-down method, like everything in tech scuba.

 

[nereas]

If I were you, what would scare me about this situation is that your backup wasn't where it was needed. This isn't just a valve drill problem, it's also a problem with not being able to find your backup regulator, which could apply in many scenarios. I hope you get that issue fixed up.

Agreed.