| I like side slung for a pony. You can get to the valve immediately so if you forgot to switch it on its less of an issue but more importantly if its leaking you will notice it straight away and can switch it off.
You can also hand the whole thing off to another diver or up to the boat to reduce weight getting back into a RHIB. Its good practice for future use of decompression stages as well.
The standard pony is the 3ltr steel which is small and compact. I haven't used an Ali3 but I am told they don't have the positive buoyancy normally expected of the bigger ali tanks. However give consideration to an Ali40. 5ltrs of gas instead of 3. Yes its much bigger but it is so incredibly light in the water you really will not notice it at all.
If you back mount your pony you should do so in a way that allowed you to reach the valve. Inverted on a longer hose is a nice way of doing this. I however decided on a slightly different approach and rigged my one on a necklaced reg and used a single long hose (no octo) on the main tank.
This way I handed off my long hose to the OOG diver and i went up on my pony. I balanced the pony on the side of my tank with a 2kg lead block on the cam band on the opposite side of the main tank and later with a canister torch.
What ever you decide is best for you please remember to practice ascending on your pony on a regular basis especially from you maximum normal Single and Pony depth.
Once you have total faith in its ability to get you up you will have a really useful safety feature. If you have no experience / faith with it, its just more dead weight to carry around.
ATB
Mark Chase
__________________ Mark, dispite the fact your a Heron shagging tosser I agree with you , Steve S 10/04/08  ATB as most people will tell you, means Always Talking Boll@cks. My responses to threads should be treated accordingly
All The Best
Mark Chase Screw the force Luke, use the VR3 |