[QUOTE="David R Johnson, post: 8526940, member: 497729"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.
You seem to be rationalizing a gear choice based on a specific diving scenario but the scenario you describe has all sorts of red flags in it that the more experienced/educated diver would raise an eyebrow at and recommend higher performing gear to meet the demands. Lets break it down:
1. "90F"...is this air temp? If so then it is only significant in that you will not have to worry about your reg freezing prior to getting in the water...the vast majority of divers in the world do not dive in temps where reg freezing during pre-dive checks is an issue. For those that do dive where this is a concern they either have a reg designed to deal with this or they suffer the freeze up and abort the dive before entering the water. If it occurs after entering the water, the reg will typically freeze in the open state which leaves it possible to continue breathing off the reg as one ascends or as they swim to their buddy to grab their octo.
2.
"150 feet" or less....last I checked 132feet (+/- 40 meters) was considered the recreational diving limit. There are significant reasons one should not exceed this depth limit without proper training and equipment. If you are diving that deep then you will want to be more than a "casual" diver that does not put much thought or emphasis on their gear and should start thinking about things from a performance-safety standpoint.
3. "In a group of people my wife and I barely know"...diving with folks you don't know creates risk as you have no idea of their training, experience, how they react under stress, etc. If you have the ability to choose your gear for this situation the recommendation would be to choose gear that may help mitigate the risk that these divers may potentially bring to your table.
4. "once or twice a year on vacation"....this is a common scenario for the vast number of divers out there. They either don't have the time, the locations, the disposable income, the interest, or any of many other reasons why they do not dive more frequently. While I prefer to use my own gear even when traveling, I dive relatively year round. When I was only diving a couple times a year, I rented equipment such as regulators...it just was not cost effective to purchase. Think about it....an entry level regulator set can be purchase for less than $200. My wife owns an Aqualung Calypso set up, 1st stage, 2nd stage, and octo was 175 euros and then I received a 20% discount. I paid another 50euro for the SPG. The cost to service this setup after 2 years of diving would be between 100-125 euros. It would be financially smarter to sell the set (minus the spg) and use the money to offset the cost of another new setup. I digress, I was just trying to lay out a financial example of regulator ownership. The reality is that you will have to maintain this gear despite the fact that you will only be using it occasionally...you actually may have more problems than the diver that is using their regulator on a frequent basis. Whether a higher performance reg will be of benefit or not in this situation would be debatable, but is still something to think about.
5. "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."...you acknowledge your lack of experience which is good, but you seem to be patently rejecting the advice on configuration that more experienced divers have offered. I personally have no expectation that you will blindly follow any of the advice you are given here, but in the responses you have received some good info to consider and you seem to be rejecting a good chunk of it based on what I can only presume is your comfort level with the configuration you were trained on that I assume was both 2nd stages routed over the right hand shoulder, yellow for the oct, 30-36inch long hoses. If this is what you want to dive then great, there is nothing wrong with that...but there are other options out there and some of those options that have been presented will fix the original issue you presented when you opened this thread....a long hose/primary done 2nd stage allows you to hand over the octo rightside up even though it is routed from the right hand side. It is also much cheaper to buy a 5-7foot hose than to buy a fancy-shmancy side venting 2nd stage that may or may not breath dry when upside down. Long hose/primary donate is not the end-all/be-all configuration but there are practical reasons why one should consider it.
All that being said....I have regulator set that has an Aqualung ABS octo on it. I used in the traditional configuration (both hoses routed over right shoulder with the octo clipped in the "golden triangle" ) for quite awhile, I have also used it with it slung on a bungee necklace with my primary on a 40-inch hose "primary donate/streamlined" configuration. I never had an issue with it in either configuration. It seems to breath dry right side up or upside down, but I do not consider it a high performance reg and have given it to my daughter who is more of a fair weather diver. I will note however that I personally would not go out and specifically buy this 2nd stage, it came on a used regulator set that I purchase a bunch of years ago, and I only have it/use it as function of it is what I had at the time (and still have). If I was making a choice to purchase a 2nd stage separately I would definitely look at something better breathing at depth that is regarded as a higher performance regulator (Deep 6 signature or Mares Abyss for example).
The reality is that what ever octo you have, when the S$%t hits the fan and that diver takes your octo and shoves it in their mouth, they may not hit the purge button or blow out first and will most likely get a mouthful of water. The reality also is, in my opinion, that if a diver is out of air and in a panicked state clawing for your octo, then lots of stuff has gone wrong because they ran out of air without any anticipation. Unless one suffers a 1st stage or low pressure hose failure and for some reason they don't see or hear the bubbles and their buddy is so oblivious to you that they don't see it either (which is a problem in and of itself) then there is no good reason for a diver to find themself in an OOA emergency unexpectedly....I can see a severe entanglement issue delaying access to the surface causing an OOA emergency but the OOA will not occur unexpectedly.
-Z[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the information reply. Yes 90F water temps, caribian vacation, on a dive boat with other people we have likely never met. I said 150' max but the plan is always less. We do have some lakes near by, but not a fan (poor vizv mostly) afer getting OW certified locally. So, caribian vacations are our future diving expectations. Perhaps florida keys or Gulf coast. Most all the people I've seen on these type dives are using equipment setup I suggested (rent or otherwise).
