Hose routing the DIR way

[malcolm smith]

Hi Matt, as has been said, I don't have a 2nd second stage on my main cylinder.
Should my main reg 2nd stage fail, it's onto the pony and end of dive.
Two 2nd stages on the main cylinder could be looked on as 2 freeflow possibilities, if one of them failed, personally I would be too twitchy to continue the dive on the other----if it had been a freeflow, perhaps the most common mishap, you've lost your gas anyway  
Don't you just love talking about gear  

Cheers, Malcolm.

[MATTBIN]

Malcolm I agree with the theory, but....
last week I dived a really shallow shore jobby, second dive in with 85bar, bit of the way through I thought it would be a good idea to use the pony for some of the dive(yes I know, we live and learn dont we) so as my 2nd stage has a habit of spewing its contents once out of the mouth and not detuned using the variable knob thingy on the top I took a good couple of breaths and then detuned it slightly using the side knob and the top knob, at this point breathing from it isnt really easy, before going to the pony. By the time I'd done that I needed air in my lungs and I wasnt wanting to hang about either. So I go to the pony dv and breath - great one small breathe and nothing, sod it I turned it off before I entered the water. So a slight moment of panic, I'll turn it on no problem as its inverted, had it not been I could have gone onto the second dv on my main tank. So the second dv 'can' be usefull.

I know I need to re-tune my main dv so it doesnt free-flow so easily when out of the mouth, but this needs to be done on every dive as the tuning knob on the side can rotate quite easily and I'm a lazy git so I dont tune it precisely every time. From that point of view its a rubbish second stage and I probably wouldnt have bought it had I known, but other than that I like it so I'll live with it.

Matt

Added
I have just seen a picture of a typical Hog routing with the primary hose under the right armpit and around the back of the neck, doesnt the loop around the neck cause a problem when buddy yanks the primary from your mouth. I accept you could easily donate by handing it over but what happens when buddy just rips it out.
Matt

[daz]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (MATTBIN @ Aug. 29 2003,14:22)]I have just seen a picture of a typical Hog routing with the primary hose under the right armpit and around the back of the neck, doesnt the loop around the neck cause a problem when buddy yanks the primary from your mouth. I accept you could easily donate by handing it over but what happens when buddy just rips it out.
Matt

KNOCK, KNOCK

Can I come in guys...  Oh this is a nice forum, not sure about the black walls and stainless steel fittings though

Anyways onto the question.

Not in my experience,  If they grab the reg from your mouth then it will come away quite easily as you dip your head forward.  (Which incidently is great because my backup reg is necklaced right under my chin).

I guess if they reached over my left shoulder from behind and grabbed the reg it could get a bit awkward but then I always try to keep them where I can see them and realistically with the resistance in water it is more likely to just pull you around).

Daz

(Honest it really does work and I tried it in anger - admittedly only a 5ft long hose, but the distance it gives you between you and a buddy justs makes everything so much easier).  Glad to see you are giving it a go bungeed or not.  If you are interested in how I loop my hoses with a single and pony drop me a PM and we will take it off this forum, it falls outside of the DIR remit.

[Bob Cooper]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (MATTBIN @ Aug. 29 2003,09:34)]I have recently purchased a 5' primary hose. I also have a pony, so I intend to necklace the secondary from my main via a rubber strap thing/bungee and route the inverted pony's hose under my right side clipped to my pocket area as its for my use normally, but could be deployed if it really goes belly up.

Whats the DIR view on this?

Matt

The official DIR view is "if you think you need a pony, you realy need a twinset and if you don't think you need a twinset, you certainly don't need a pony"....or something like that anyway.

In other words you don't really need a pony.

Why not rig the pony like a stage bottle?  That way you get used to carring a stage so that as/when you progress to twins and stages it won't be so difficult to deal with.

As for the 5' hose.....I've never had much success with them, preferring a 7' hose instead.

Remember that if things go "belly up" you must be prepared to donate the reg you are breathing,  that reg belongs to your buddy, not you.

[malcolm smith]

I'd like to back up Daz on the effectiveness side of the long hose donation from the mouth.
When I needed one pretty quick, Andy Hayhursts forced pirouette as I span him round was only matched in speed by that with which I whisked his reg out of his mouth  
I was out of his face gasping like a landed fish for a good few breaths, what a great system, problem solved, he re looped, and off we go-----brilliant!

Cheers, Malcolm.

[Mark Davies]

<font color='#000080'>

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Bob Cooper @ Aug. 29 2003,21:06)]The official DIR view is &quot;if you think you need a pony, you realy need a twinset and if you don't think you need a twinset, you certainly don't need a pony&quot;....or something like that anyway.

In other words you don't really need a pony.

Bob, help me on this one, please.

I've spoken with lots of people using twin-sets and I'm pretty much sold on the benefits. I can see how they provide redundancy for system failure. What they don't do, in contrast with a pony, is provide bail-out for OOA situations.

Now, I understand, and have said more than once elsewhere, that planning for OOA is just bad gas management. However, I can envisage a scenario where problems might occur on a dive which distract you from monitoring your air supply. In those very situations, your gas consumption is likely to increase. It is not unforseeable that you can find yourself sucking on an empty tank. A pony is obviously invaluable in this situation. A sharp wake-up call when the tank empties and then a separate source to get you to the surface.

I can't see how a twin user would cope with this situation. I appreciate the rule of thirds, but in this case it doesn't really apply. Your views?

[Tibbs]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Mark Davies @ Aug. 31 2003,23:42)]Now, I understand, and have said more than once elsewhere, that planning for OOA is just bad gas management. However, I can envisage a scenario where problems might occur on a dive which distract you from monitoring your air supply. In those very situations, your gas consumption is likely to increase. It is not unforseeable that you can find yourself sucking on an empty tank. A pony is obviously invaluable in this situation. A sharp wake-up call when the tank empties and then a separate source to get you to the surface.

Really what you need to do is to play a game with yourself. On a dive, before you check your gas, guess what it is. Then see how close you are. After a while you get it right. A lot. When I do it now I am very disappointed if I am more than 10 bar out.

It gets to be quite strange eventually. I check my gauge on the surface and again at the bottom of the shot, or when I reach the seabed, just to make sure I have used some and I haven't accidentally shut my isolator. I still do a modified valve drill when I hit bottom just make sure all is OK. The next time I look at my gauge I will have 150bar. No idea how I do it, but when I look at my gauge for the third time it says 150 bar. I just get this feeling 'check the gauge' and I have 150 bar. It can range from 10 minutes in to 40 minutes in, it doesn't matter. I always know. It just comes from practise.

You never just 'run out of air'. I hate to be completely unreasonable, but there is no excuse to find yourself 'sucking on an empty tank'. If you know how you consume gas you will get a feel for when you are upping your comsumption, no matter what is going on around you, and adjust accordingly.

It is actually unforseeable that me, or my buddy will run out of gas. The only time I could see that happening would be if I managed to get trapped under something underwater, and at which point I hope to God my buddy has gone to get me some more gas and helpers so that he can free me!

Chris

[Phil Ennis]

<font color='#0000FF'>If you can't monitor an SPG then you shouldn't be diving would be my reply to anyone who got into that situation Mark. The twin has it's own redundancy if it is manifolded in that you can shutdown but obviously this doesn't cover running out of air. My pony on my single rig is for redundancy should I get a freeflow. DIR way is to have an H valve, makes sense as does most of it.

Opening statement may seem to be a bit harsh but that is my opinion and I am PADI.

[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.)

[John Gulliver]

I'll try to bring it back on track, Matt  
I've played around with my configuration more or less constantly for several years. The following is the best solution I've been able to find:
Pony back-mounted and inverted on right side of main cylinder.
5 foot hose (quite long enough for sportdiving – I believe the DIR people call it an ocean longhose) from my main cylinder under my right arm, across my chest and round my neck, yellow dv in my mouth.
Secondary from main cylinder (on an omniswivel) under my left arm and clipped to a D-ring on my left shoulder with bungee necklace held flat against the hose by thin surgical tubing (see below for explanation).
HP hose under my left arm with spg clipped to D-ring on my left shoulder so that I can see it all the time.
Suit inflator hose under my right arm.
Pony hose (standard octopus length, i.e slightly longer than a standard reg hose) under my right arm and dv under my chin on a bungee necklace.
I would use my pony reg in the first place if I had to donate my primary. My secondary is clipped out of the way (though readily accessible) because I consider it to be more or less superfluous when diving at home but it's on a necklace because it becomes my back-up on trips abroad, when I don't have my pony. The necklace is, as already mentioned, held flat against the hose by thin surgical tubing. I, or my buddy, could use that dv if necessary but an awful lot of things would have to go wrong before I/we had to. Basically, I think I could remove it, but as I travel quite a lot I would be constantly removing it and replacing it, so I just don't bother. It's not really in the way.
I'm sure somebody will tell me I'm doing it all wrong but this set-up works best for me.
PS I have a Diverite Transpac II with Recwing – perfect for this set-up imho.