Which regulator should you donate?

[roakey]

I believe that each and every one of your issues has been addressed in the previous 179 replies. Some multiple times.

Anyone truly interested in this issue should take the time to go back and read each and every reply. There's some good stuff in here.

Roak

 

[Kim]

Well - that was a good read!! It must have taken me over an hour to get through! I have one small question. Is the hose to a bungied backup a standard short hose length - (i.e. what comes normally setup as the primary) - or is it slightly shorter?

 

[koi]

Kim -

in the DIR philosophy, the primary hose is usually 7'. The hose length on the backup around the necklace on your neck is 22"-24".

 

[lee08]

I guess my question would be how many people here actually had a buddy run out of air and unexpectedly grab a regular from you? Which one did they grab?

 

[The Kraken]

Beth,
One should do a functional check of BOTH regulators before entering the water AND another check immediately after entering the water while under water and before one commences the dive.

It's amazing the number of divers I've watched before a dive put their primary regulators in their mouths, take a single breath and head off to dive and NEVER check their alternates to see if they were functioning properly. That could be a bad scene for one's buddy.

 

[lamont]

So, I was talking to another diver today and told him that I was thinking about going to a 7' hose on my primary. He then asked me why I couldn't just place a 7' hose on my octo. His reason was that, by remvoing the primary from your mouth and donating it in an OOA situation, you would be creating a potential hazard. He questioned why I couldn't simply keep the primary in my mouth, while donating the secondary on the 7' hose. The advantages of this would be eliminating a step, while still retaining the benefits of a long hose (less restrictive, etc.).

I couldn't think of a decent answer other than problematic stowing of the extra hose on an octo. Whereas, there wouldn't be a problem with the normal routing of a 7' hose on the primary.

Any opinions?

IMO, the biggest benefit to the long hose is that you always know where both of your regulators are.

If you have 7' hose stored in some kind of bungee or break-away there's a decent chance it will either fall out/break away on you when you don't want it or won't do so when you do need it. You run the risk that when you need it the 7' hose will actually have fallen out and worked its way behind you without you noticing -- your panicked buddy will then rip the short-hose reg out of your mouth and you've got a pretty serious emergency still. Either that or you wont be able to find it or you wont be able to get it out of the bungee fast enough, with the same results.

By having the reg you donate in a long hose in your mouth you always know where it is, always know that it is working and can deploy it immediately to get your OOA buddies problem fixed. By having the backup reg on a bungee around your neck you also know exactly where it is, and there is also no breakaway keeping it in place. You also have much more confidence that it'll be working when you go to it.

Also, I really like the way that the long hose sort of follows the philosophy of making the worst/failure case the normal case. The worst thing a buddy can do to you when they're OOA is rip the reg out of your mouth. If you're diving a long hose you're used to donating the reg in your mouth, you're used to having the reg out of your mouth, and you can quickly go to your backup without having any issues. It turns something which would be an emergency in an OOA with an "octo" into something you give your dive buddy some crap about when you get back to the boat/shore.

 

[The Kraken]

Lee08,
I've never personally experienced having a buddy in an OOA situation, but I have talked to parties who have had first hand experience with this emergency. From their descriptions, it seems that there were busier hands than a teenage boy in back seat of his daddy's Chebby !!!!

 

[Web Monkey]

It doesn't really matter what your preference is, since it's usually more of a "mugging" than a "donation".

I beleive the internationally recognized sign for "Out of Air" is when someone comes up to you and rips the primary out of your mouth.

This is usually reasonable from their point of view, since if they only have a few seconds of conciousness left, they don't want to spend it playing "Does the Octo Work?" or "Guess the Equipment Configuration".

That said, if I have a choice, I'll donate my pony reg, since I know it works (I breathe off it on every dive and have it serviced with my primary)

For people with no pony, and an Air-II, the choice is easy. The Air-II hose is too short to donate, will only reach the wearer and contains the inflate/deflate buttons for your BC, so the OOA diver has to get your primary.

Terry

Just wondering which the people on this board donate....your primary that is in your mouth to an OOA diver or do you give them your backup reg or octo?

I donate my primary and I switch to my backup.

 

[Web Monkey]

The single-breath thing is also dangerous, since you can get one breath with your tank turned off.

I wouldn't want to hit the water and discover the breath I just took was the only one there was.

Terry

Beth,
One should do a functional check of BOTH regulators before entering the water AND another check immediately after entering the water while under water and before one commences the dive.

It's amazing the number of divers I've watched before a dive put their primary regulators in their mouths, take a single breath and head off to dive and NEVER check their alternates to see if they were functioning properly. That could be a bad scene for one's buddy.

 

[The Kraken]

Monkey,
I love your "mugging" description !!!!