Donating from the mouth

[Woz]

OK I can see the logic in donating from the mouth and I have a nice long 2m hose do do this with.

However, the BSAC view is that then you have a second diver who is without air and has to do something about it in an already stressful situation with a panicky diver now attached to you. I can sort of see this point too.

So what about the alternative of the AAS on a 2m hose, easily available and bright yellow?

I shall stand back and let the debate begin...

[AirHog]

Why would the second/donating diver be panicking as he has just assisted a buddy and resolved one panicking diver situation and he knows exactly where his secondary DV is located, which is something the previously panicking diver may or may not have remembered from the buddy check. <phew>

Regards

Mark

[kevFISH]

Originally Posted by Woz

OK I can see the logic in donating from the mouth and I have a nice long 2m hose do do this with.

However, the BSAC view is that then you have a second diver who is without air and has to do something about it in an already stressful situation with a panicky diver now attached to you. I can sort of see this point too.

This is one of those situations where the techy/DIR approach may not be the 'best' thing for recreational divers. The idea of donating from the mouth when you have 4 regs is so that you can breathe a suitable mix - not an issue for single cylinder users.

Of course the beauty of having a 2m hose is that you can distance yourself from a panicky diver very quickly, yet still sharing your air. So, a 2m octo may very well be a suitable solution for a 'standard'/single cyl set up.

No doubt there will be numerous other views

[Garf]

One of the fundemental points of the matter is being missed here.

A panicking, out of air diver, is likely to grab for your reg in a nanosecond. What's critical here is that they will almost certainly (and certainly did when it happened to a buddy of mine) go for the regulator in your mouth. With the long hose, you can just drop your head to your chest and pick up your necklaced backup, and the long hose will come away from the back of your head if hoglooped, and that is the situation resolved.

If your backup is on the long hose, then the buddy may well grab your primary anyway, leaving you with a 2 metre hose to navigate and find the second stage for yourself.

I am not a DIR diver, but much of my kit is DIR-ish, becuase I look at all divers and take the parts that make practical, safety-related sense to me. The DIR rig makes a lot of sense to me, whether the diving is recreational or not.

[Helen F H]

My old instructor always breathed off her long hose with the loop held in an elastic tube (about 6 inches long, attached to the A clamp with a velcro loop). She went off the idea that a panic stricken diver will try and take the reg out of your mouth, and therefore this is why the long hose. She would then swap onto her octopus on a loop around her neck. I have since bought her kit and have not changed it.

[Padowan]

The key is not that JUST that the long hose is in your mouth. Based on the premise that an out of air diver is likely to grab the reg in your mouth, it also has the benefits of being a known working regulator, which has the correct gas for that depth. The long hose is normally only on the back gas where you might need the extra length to negotiage a narrow cave or wreck passage, on your way out, and back to the surface...

[Woz]

Originally Posted by AirHog

Why would the second/donating diver be panicking as he has just assisted a buddy and resolved one panicking diver situation and he knows exactly where his secondary DV is located, which is something the previously panicking diver may or may not have remembered from the buddy check. <phew>

Regards

Mark

Nah what I meant was:

Panicky first diver pulls reg out of your mouth. Continues to be a panicky flappy chap, albeit 2m away.

Donating diver now without a reg finds backup reg and stuffs it in. But with panicky flappy boy still attached this may not be totally straightforward.

So- for single mix diving, as has been pointed out, would the 2m hose be better off on the AAS? I have a reg over each shoulder rather than clipped in down at waist level so finding it would be straightforward.

[Garf]

For more technical diving, I couldn't agree with you more. I was trying to make the point that the system is equally applicable for recreational diving, even without the concerns to multiple gas mixes etc

[AirHog]

In our club we are taught to wait politely and calmly while someone selects the correct appendage for us to suck on....but enough of BSAC initiation procedures and back on topic.

Most of our guys appear to dive with a standard length primary and a long hosed octo. I have adopted the long hose primary and standard length octo because, after a little trial and error, this is what I felt most comfortable with. In practice and after an OOA situation has been dealt with* I find it easier to hook the standard length DV back onto my BCD and restow the 2m long hose around my neck and into my mouth than trying to fight with a 2m hose while attempting to re-stow it into some bungees around a tank strapped to my back.

*by dealt with, I mean that in most cases after the OOA diver has got air he stops panicking and at some point during the ascent his tank may come back to life due to the pressure differences at depth. This is assuming that the OOA situation was OOA and not a failure.

Regards

Mark

[Woz]

Well saying all that during a buddy check I normally tell them to grab whichever reg they want- once they have some air then we can always swap to the 2m long one for ease of swimmin' abaaaht.

Mind you, if I had, as I probably will very shortly, a pony with 80% in it for shallow deco, and they grabbed that at depth then the $h!t would hit the fan in a lights out Sooty type stylee.