RubberDucky
Contributor
- Messages
- 178
- Reaction score
- 30
- # of dives
- 50 - 99
Following your advice, Jax and DandyDon, I searched for "spare air" (with quotes), and had the results display as posts, and not as threads.
I went through the first 6 or 7 pages of results, and found mostly snarky comments about it. It seems that putting thought into posts is too much effort for some, and that it is preferred to take the easy route with a quick, low content jab.
So, ignoring the circle-jerks and drawing my own conclusions here, I see a huge disadvantage of Spare Air being that you're probably not going to be able to complete your entire safety stop, if at all (thanks, Captain Obvious!
. Have a deco obligation? Even worse. A pony bottle would be the obvious welcome choice here, assuming the air supply everyone was taught to use - their buddy's - was unattainable for whatever reason.
What I personally think a Spare Air would be most useful for is making your way to your dive buddy if they've managed to get away from you. Anyone who doesn't have the luxury of having a long term dive buddy to practice with and feel comfortable with (i.e. anyone who must use instabuddies often) is probably going to find themselves farther away from their buddy than they should be at some point in their diving career. This can happen for any of a number of reasons, though there are few reasons I can think of why it should.
I would prefer to use something like 3 cu ft of spare air to get to my buddy's supply so that we can ascend and complete a safety stop, rather than using it for self rescue. In the event of using it for self rescue: 1. I would be leaving my buddy alone, and 2. not be able to complete a safety stop. Neither are desirable situations of course.
The only dilemma I see there is the possibility of running out of the spare air before making it to the buddy, and now having to CESA with no extra air (other than that which may expand in your lungs and in your tank as you ascend). I guess (for me) it would come down to making the decision to go for the buddy's air supply, or to surface, with the buddy's supply being the preferred route.
I am only referring to the only diving scenario I know which is recreational drift diving at an average depth of 40 - 50 ft in warm water with excellent visibility (sample taken from 30 dives in Cozumel where I tracked max and avg depth). The notion of 3 cu ft of extra air for "deep" diving is of course silly, although some dives in Coz can hit the 90 - 100 ft mark, and beyond.
I know that I would feel much more confident about doing a CESA at 100 ft if I knew I had even just 1 extra breath between now and the surface. But what does that matter if I'm going to end up possibly getting bent? Not only that, but pony bottles appear to be incredibly cheaper than "Spare Air" anyway, though I guess additional hardware is needed, but at least the cheaper price can help to offset some of that cost.
(Hope I didn't go off too far on a tangent about the spare air, or cause too many groans by beating a deader than dead horse :bonk:
).
I went through the first 6 or 7 pages of results, and found mostly snarky comments about it. It seems that putting thought into posts is too much effort for some, and that it is preferred to take the easy route with a quick, low content jab.
So, ignoring the circle-jerks and drawing my own conclusions here, I see a huge disadvantage of Spare Air being that you're probably not going to be able to complete your entire safety stop, if at all (thanks, Captain Obvious!
. Have a deco obligation? Even worse. A pony bottle would be the obvious welcome choice here, assuming the air supply everyone was taught to use - their buddy's - was unattainable for whatever reason.What I personally think a Spare Air would be most useful for is making your way to your dive buddy if they've managed to get away from you. Anyone who doesn't have the luxury of having a long term dive buddy to practice with and feel comfortable with (i.e. anyone who must use instabuddies often) is probably going to find themselves farther away from their buddy than they should be at some point in their diving career. This can happen for any of a number of reasons, though there are few reasons I can think of why it should.
I would prefer to use something like 3 cu ft of spare air to get to my buddy's supply so that we can ascend and complete a safety stop, rather than using it for self rescue. In the event of using it for self rescue: 1. I would be leaving my buddy alone, and 2. not be able to complete a safety stop. Neither are desirable situations of course.
The only dilemma I see there is the possibility of running out of the spare air before making it to the buddy, and now having to CESA with no extra air (other than that which may expand in your lungs and in your tank as you ascend). I guess (for me) it would come down to making the decision to go for the buddy's air supply, or to surface, with the buddy's supply being the preferred route.
I am only referring to the only diving scenario I know which is recreational drift diving at an average depth of 40 - 50 ft in warm water with excellent visibility (sample taken from 30 dives in Cozumel where I tracked max and avg depth). The notion of 3 cu ft of extra air for "deep" diving is of course silly, although some dives in Coz can hit the 90 - 100 ft mark, and beyond.
I know that I would feel much more confident about doing a CESA at 100 ft if I knew I had even just 1 extra breath between now and the surface. But what does that matter if I'm going to end up possibly getting bent? Not only that, but pony bottles appear to be incredibly cheaper than "Spare Air" anyway, though I guess additional hardware is needed, but at least the cheaper price can help to offset some of that cost.
(Hope I didn't go off too far on a tangent about the spare air, or cause too many groans by beating a deader than dead horse :bonk:
).
Great little shop to be so far inland but they are geared to introducing new divers to the sport, keeping interest going on the high desert, sponsoring organized trips. 
