[Mark Davies]

<font color='#000080'>Tibbs/Phil,

Yes I would agree, which is the source of my comment early on - &quot;planning for OOA is just bad gas management&quot;. My current rig, without a pony, has redundancy for free-flows on a single tank. I currently don't have bail-out for OOA. I have never run out of air, or even come close. But I do have the sense and humility to realise that an extreme situation could arise.

Let's say it's your buddy that's entangled and running low on air. You're desperately trying to free him to save his life. Are you really going to be monitoring your air that closely? Sure, you might have a good idea what your air consumption is like, but you're going to be gulping it down twice as quick as usual. I've seen enough of human nature not to be so presumptuous as to assume that I am infallible.

At least in a situation like that, with a pony, when I did run out of air it would be a stark reminder of my situation. I'd then know that I had no option but to abandon my buddy to death in order to save myself. Do you honestly think that when you saw your supply diminish to the point when you only had just enough air to surface that you wouldn't be tempted to stay that little bit longer?

Sure, I could be tempted to breathe off the pony for a while, but at least I would have had that slap that said &quot;This situation is FUBAR&quot;, far more than seeing a needle reach a red line would; and that's presuming you saw the needle reach the line in the first place, (the doubt of which is my main cause of concern).

Two people recently died, by reports as a result of an OOA situation. Did they both run out of air, at the same time? I don't know, but I guess not.

That's why it bothers me, and clearly the answer is to use a pony. I was just curious to see if there was a good reason why it didn't seem to bother everyone else. Not wanting to encumber myself with a pony, I was kind of hoping that there was.

(MATTBIN - we're way off track here - hijacked your thread, sorry.)