What Slung Pony Hose Length Do You Prefer ?

[jim T.]

Thanks DA. Would you mind telling me (us) which shop and city you work at/in?
I drive through South Dakota every couple of years and it would be nice to be able to stop by and thank you/meet you in person (for all the help you've given me/us). If you'd rather not say, I understand.

diveH3, I intend stowing everything on a slung bottle so I agree with all you've advised, thanks. I'm looking forward to trying everything out on the 21st on our next club dive. I'm currently using a safe second (Atomic SS1) so I would have only one reg necklaced (if I ever try that) and have no deco mix-up concerns at this point in time. Just using the pony as a bail out bottle in Rec. diving for the foreseeable future. I just was looking for possible options regarding the hose length issue(s). I will likely go to an octopus instead of safe 2nd eventually.

I considered a mini gauge on the bottle but I'm getting pretty darn near sighted at 54yrs. so I thought I'd start with a full sized gauge so I could see it! The dept. of redundancy dept. I guess. If it gets to be too much of a hassle or after some experience I feel fine just using the R190's unbalanced 500 p.s.i. "warning" I may go to a button gauge to cut down on possible failure points in the future. I ordered a "naked" brass/glass gauge from diveriteexpress.com and will leave the hose connections uncovered/visable to keep an eye on things.

I'm always completely floored by the generousity of board members to help out with info. and experiences. I just wish the search function here was more precise as I "tripped" over pony hose length preference theads after I'd searched using several word combos, when looking up something completely different. Guess we're all used to that though.

 

[NYG1931]

How do you guys hook the slung pony up to your BCD or BP/W, which D rings are used??? Also why dont you guys keep the air on in the bottle during the dive, why do you charge the reg then turn the air off, free flow problems???

 

[XJae]

you attach the cylinder to your left chest and left hip d-rings.

basically, you keep the bottle off to help avoid breathing the wrong mix at the wrong depth. (i realize in this case it is probably just a bailout redundant gas source of bottom mix and doesn't matter) but, when used for deco purposes you can easily find yourself with two bottles, i.e. one with 50% and one with 100%, you dont want to just deploy a reg and breath cause you could easily accidentally breath 100% at 70', for example, so the procedure most use is deploy the reg, follow the hose to the valve, check for correct bottle, turn on the gas, breath. this way there is no doubt you're on the correct bottle cause all the others are off. if you see yourself going down the tec road, it is probably a good idea to get use to this procedure.

if you dive with the tank off and not charged, the water will travel up the second stage and flood the first stage. it will still work, but now you just gave your first stage a salt water bath that you can't really rinse and should probably get serviced. if you turn it on to pressurize it and then turn it off it remains pressurized and can not flood. as cd mentioned, you need to turn them on and off every once in a while to recharge due to the pressure dropping with depth and other leakage issues.

 

[NYG1931]

XJ, thanks alot for the info, very helpful...