Using octo upside down

[diversteve]

My buddy used the Mares MV for a couple of years. It has a swivel so is omni-directional. It was not as good a breather as a primary but will keep you alive. For $90 it's not a bad deal.

One consideration with mixing brands is your dealer has to service both.

Also Poseidon has a different imtermediate pressure than just about everybody else. My buddy used a Jetstream as an octo for a while and while it was functional after being detuned slightly - it free-flowed almost every time hit the water until it was turned over. Poseidon also makes a Jettstream octo in yellow and since both vent out the end - are ambidextrous as well.

I have heard, but have no experience with that the Apeks Egress is hard to get parts for. Apeks is owned by Aqualung if you're considering their gear.I believe all their dealers work on both brands.

You could also look into an alt/octo like the Scubapro Air2 or Atomic SS1. In that scenario you donate your primary and use it - both to breathe and to inflate your bcd. Atomic uses a special hose and guarantees it breathes as well as their primary models. My usual dive buddy has one - it works.

 

[BikerBecca]

In an out of air situation you give, or they rip out of your mouth, your primary and then you breathe off the Octo. So the question should be what Octo are you comfortable breathing on?

 

[AJ]

In an out of air situation you give, or they rip out of your mouth, your primary and then you breathe off the Octo.

I hope I noticed something was wrong before that as a good buddy should. But anyway, I prefer donating primary, bungeed backup. That way primary orientation is always right and with some practice donating is lightning fast. In this setup I always know where my backup is. It helps preventing panic with me and the other knowing where everything is.

 

[tbone1004]

In an out of air situation you give, or they rip out of your mouth, your primary and then you breathe off the Octo. So the question should be what Octo are you comfortable breathing on?

theoretically you are situationally aware enough to see them coming at you so you can give it to them. If they sneak up on your, they take it.
With the obvious exceptions of my CCR's and double hose, my "octo" is the same as my primary. For me that means Poseidon Jetstreams, but I am a big fan of matching primary and secondary second stages

 

[David R Johnson]

Pardon my ignorance. But what does breathing easy or rough matter when the only time I or anyone will actually use the yellow octo (other that testing it) is when we are making a safe ascent to the surface, after they or I have had an issue? We area not planning on tec diving. If that is in the future, then yes a better second will be on the table. To be specific, we are talking about 90 F, reef/wreck diving, 150 feet or less, in a group of people my wife and I barely know, once or twice a year vacation. This is likely all we will be doing. No neckless, just a yellow hose and hopfully, yellow safe second on the right side, for use in an emergency.
And by the way, yes I am new to diving. So be gentle.

 

[Saboteur]

The Mares MV Octopus works upside down, is cheap and good. The Mares brand is popular in Europe where it's cheap and you get it serviced everywhere, but since you're from Arkansas better check first if a local dive shop offers Mares service and about the prices.
Better don't mix brands between first and second stages, so for example don't buy just the Mares MV for an Apeks first stage.
As you're concerned about confusion when someone is in desparate need of air: the best way is to always stay close together and keep an eye on each other, and practice air sharing frequently. The method (octo or primary donate) doesn't matter as long as you're a fixed buddy pair wth your wife and practice your way of air sharing. When it comes to instant buddies however, anything can happen and a confused bad buddy can mess up every air donation method.

There is no problem with mixing brands of first and second stages so long as the IP requirements of the second stage match that of the first.

 

[tbone1004]

Pardon my ignorance. But what does breathing easy or rough matter when the only time I or anyone will actually use the yellow octo (other that testing it) is when we are making a safe ascent to the surface, after they or I have had an issue? We area not planning on tec diving. If that is in the future, then yes a better second will be on the table. To be specific, we are talking about 90 F, reef/wreck diving, 150 feet or less, in a group of people my wife and I barely know, once or twice a year vacation. This is likely all we will be doing. No neckless, just a yellow hose and hopfully, yellow safe second on the right side, for use in an emergency.
And by the way, yes I am new to diving. So be gentle.

One could argue that with very infrequent diving, you would want a necklace for primary donate which puts everything in the same spot every time vs dangling behind you. Research has shown that colors don't mean anything, and real world experience from many of us dealing with OOA incidents shows that if someone is going to grab a regulator, they're grabbing the one that is making bubbles in your mouth. Different if they calmly ask you for it or you offer, but even then are you going to be able to respond quick enough that they will stay in a calm state to wait.
If you are going to use a cheap secondary, I would urge you to use primary donate as your OOA protocol so you get to deal with the sh!tty regulator while the person who actually needs it gets the good regulator so they are less likely to bolt when they feel like they can't breathe.

150ft is quite deep and you want high performing regulators down there. Those puck style regs don't have good enough flow rates to make me even want to think about breathing one at 150ft if I'm calm, that's one of the last things I want in my mouth if I have any sort of elevated breathing rate.

One could argue with infrequent diving as well, the risk of an incident is significantly higher than if you dove all the time. With that, if someone really needs that secondary in an "emergency", a higher performing secondary will minimize the risk of that incident being a real emergency with a panicked diver that feels like they can't breathe.

 

[AJ]

But what does breathing easy or rough matter when the only time I or anyone will actually use the yellow octo (other that testing it) is when we are making a safe ascent to the surface, after they or I have had an issue?

Good question. To be honest, ease of breathing has nothing to do with depth. Stress leads in allmost every situation to heavier and faster breathing. In such a stressfull situation you don't want to add more stress by an heavy breathing second stage. Someone who thinks he/she can't get enough air is likely to bolt to the surface. So, every little detail that helps you to deal with stress and cope with the situation is welcome.

 

[leadduck]

Good question. To be honest, ease of breathing has nothing to do with depth. Stress leads in allmost every situation to heavier and faster breathing. In such a stressfull situation you don't want to add more stress by an heavy breathing second stage. Someone who thinks he/she can't get enough air is likely to bolt to the surface. So, every little detail that helps you to deal with stress and cope with the situation is welcome.

Actually the work-of-breathing of the Mares MV is OK with 0.67J/l . The point is rather that a safe second is often tuned a bit harder by the factory or service guy, because you want it to work reliably but not accidentally freeflow. Sometimes it's too much and then people complain that their R195, Prestige, ... is hard to breathe and blame it on the model, but it only takes a quarter turn with an Allen key to fix that. When you buy a new set of say Abyss + Abyss Octopus, you may also find that the octopus is a bit harder to breathe although it's exactly the same model.

 

[rsingler]

But what does breathing easy or rough matter when the only time I or anyone will actually use the yellow octo (other that testing it) is when we are making a safe ascent to the surface, after they or I have had an issue?

When my wife was getting certified, she was used to practicing with my easy breathing regulators. For her Open Water Dives, she was using rental equipment in Hawaii. When the time came for her shared air drill and ascent, the octo she was handed was one of the ABS style that can go upside down without a problem.
But as others have pointed out, it breathed like a pig. She started to panic, because she felt she wasn't getting enough air. Fortunately, she stuck with it, and did just fine.
Yes, it was just a practice dive, but the stress she felt was not unlike a really panicked diver who is OOA.
My personal opinion is that whether you primary donate, or hand over an octo, the reg you really want to breathe from should perform flawlessly.
This is more significant than the challenge of handing it over right side up.

In my opinion, it's not tec, it's better: octo right under my chin on a necklace where I can get it quickly. Primary donate on a longer hose and a right angle connector that makes the right side up handoff a piece of cake. Plus, the hose routes under my arm and up to my mouth so there is zero pull when I turn my head. Your primary hose length can be 3, 4 or 5 feet, depending upon how "tec" you want to dive. That's a different discussion.