Which regulator should you donate?

[kwesler]

I am getting my rescue cert next month, and that training may change the way I feel about this...

I dive the long hose, and donate the primary, and breathe off of my bungied octo.

As a by the way-I practice switching between my two regs on every ohter dive or so, OOA drills with my buddy ditto. When I dive with my 12 year old son, our drill includes my tugging at his primary without warning-I never actually pull it out of his mouth-that is a little TOO realistic, but we do not drill the "hand signals and gentle exchange" situation.

As another BTW-I have been involved with two OOA siutations-both from poor maintenance of a reg. Both in low viz quarries. One time, the long hose kept the diver at a comfortable distance until he calmed down. The second time, he grabbed me, and I grabbed him by his BC and pulled him close enough so his flailing could not harm me. I had to hold him pretty hard with my hands on his shoulders to get him to calm down, but all was well in the end.

 

[roakey]

Originally posted by devilfish
Good shot roakey, too bad diving instruction nowadays is like the old telephone game, by the time the message gets to the last person, it's nothing like the original message. Too many inventions out there with the basic knowledge lost in the shuffle and then taken for gospel. Also it is too easy to get cought up in claims "I can do this, I can do that, I did this, I am able to do that". Unfortunately it does not apply to the majority especially beginning divers out there. As for the ability to have the reg out while being a bit deeper than a bath tub, when you come to my itc and can make an ascent breathing directly from the tank valve, then we can talk. That's enough rock throwing, peace.

About the “telephone game”, what message are you saying has been perverted? I didn’t just pass on a message, I drew some logical conclusions from some basic information. It looks like a number of folks followed my line of reasoning.

Actually devilfish from looking at your site I knew darn well that you didn't fear taking the reg out of your mouth, you have too much experience. I was going to make the point that the reason you fear taking the reg out of your mouth in an OOA situation is that you've been TAUGHT to fear it from the mainstream training agencies. But the fact that you teach an ITC puts you in a position of more than just being a victim of such alarmist training, it makes you part of the problem. Actually in all fairness you’re only propagating the problem because your agency tells you to.

As for breathing off a cylinder (we called it “milking”), that was taught in my BASIC PADI scuba class I took in the 70s. We’re not talking advanced or anything, this was a BASIC class. My entire class of newbies was able to handle it. Do you mean to tell me that your agency has dumbed-down its curriculum to the point that this is something instructor candidates don’t know how to do? And that an ITC instructor thinks it's some incredibly advanced skill? Brand new divers handled this skill back in the 70s. Collectively I don’t think folks have gotten stupid over the last thirty years. Anyway, I’ll assume for the moment that I’ve passed your litmus test of being able to milk a tank and that “we can talk.”

Given that people haven’t changed, what has? Answer: Least common denominator training coupled with litigation paralysis. Litigation paralysis refers to the inability of an organization to change to a better way of doing things because they’re too worried about be sued over what they’ve taught in the past. The general aviation industry has this in spades. If you ever make a major change for the better, the lawyers descend upon you like a plague of locusts claiming that what you used to teach was inferior and that caused all sorts of wrongful deaths.

So what you end up with is an organization that feels it’s better to keep endangering people with outdated, inferior “standards” than to improve.

PADI adopted BCs, SPGs and octos from the technical divers.
PADI (after telling folks for years that it’d kill you) adopted Nitrox from the technical divers

I think it’s a matter of time for donating the primary, but I expect lots of resistance if history is a teacher. NAUI is on its way already.

Roak

 

[devilfish]

OK Roak, you wrote "I think it’s a matter of time for donating the primary, but I expect lots of resistance if history is a teacher. NAUI is on its way already. "
Answer this honestly, no hostility intended. When you teach your basic class, I am sure that for training dives your students are not with doubles, 7 ft hose, tech gear, etc, just basic open water gear with a single and an octopus. If that is so, is their gear set up with the prime cleary of different color and on a longer hose, since that is the one they will pass off? Because if they start passing of the prime then it would make more sense. For those that dive with an integerated inflator/secondary reg, is their prime on a longer hose? This not what I am normally seing on divers.

 

[Wendy]

i post this thread and leave town for a couple days and look what happens. I should post stuff like this more often.

When I was trained in my ow class I was taught to donate my primary from my mouth and I go to my backup.

If I am OOA, for any reasons, either due to me being stupid and just running out of air, or if I had some sort of gear failure, etc I wil not want to have to search around for the octo on the first person I come to with a working reg. I shouldn't have to worry about whether fto look for it on a bungee, in a pocket, in a retainer, on a clip, or just dangling behind the diver. i am going to take the reg from your mouth. I agree with the others that said that the OOA diver may have been OOA for a while and giving them the primary gives them air right then and there, from a working reg. I'm not going to signal for them to wait a second to let me get my octo/backup for them to use, while they are OOA and watching me breath. They get my primary.
I have just been breathing and I can get my backup from where ever it is and stick it in my mouth. I see no problem here.

Oh and as for the air2 thing. I don't like it and my buddies that in the past had them all got rid of them. You haven't started your class yet, it may not me too late to return it and get a backup reg.

Gee what debate oriented topic should I pick next?

 

[buff]

Bungied primary around the neck is the way to go.

There is no better way to identify a "donatable" reg. than by placing it in your mouth. Divers have all sorts of "clips" and "snaps" to hold an octo in place and they are positioned all over the body. It could take a minute just for an OOA diver to locate an octo on a buddy diver-a couple of tugs on the primary and the buddy should know what's going on.

If everyone had an octo under their neck it would be a "universal" sign that "the reg. in my mouth is for you and the one under my chin for me" It would also make divers more aware of the importance of the octo.

I'm off to make my bungie necklace.

 

[Ontario Diver]

My tech instructor puts it thusly... donate whatever they grab. IF they are polite and do some signals, give'em the long one. (Ooooh that sounds dirty!)

(of course what we practise is donate the primary and switch to the bungied octo - sometimes without using your hands.....)

 

[Zept]

Originally posted by Wendy
If I am OOA, for any reasons, either due to me being stupid and just running out of air, or if I had some sort of gear failure, etc I wil not want to have to search around for the octo on the first person I come to with a working reg. I shouldn't have to worry about whether fto look for it on a bungee, in a pocket, in a retainer, on a clip, or just dangling behind the diver. i am going to take the reg from your mouth.

Originally posted by Buff
There is no better way to identify a "donatable" reg. than by placing it in your mouth. Divers have all sorts of "clips" and "snaps" to hold an octo in place and they are positioned all over the body.

Don't you guys check the location of the octopus when you do a buddy check on a stranger?

I have no arguments with the long hose... sounds as if it works well for people who are used to it. However, I wouldn't be wild about diving with someone who was using a DIR rig. It isn't what I'm used to. My gear (standard rec arrangement) isn't what they are used to. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Seems to me it's important for both members of a buddy team to have the same expectations.

Zept

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by Wendy
i post this thread and leave town for a couple days and look what happens. I should post stuff like this more often.

Well.... I hate to be the one to point it out...
But there is one other possibility...

 

[Wendy]

UP,

Are you implying that I am a trouble maker? :sweetdevi

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by Wendy
Are you implying that I am a trouble maker? :sweetdevi

Not at all, since we are on the same team....
But I figured I would point out the other possibility....
(That was included in your post) before someone else did...
Thereby removing the opportunity to capitalize upon the opening...