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  Jason Rogers <gasdive@sy*.DI*.oz*.au*> wrote:-
> ... Surely it is harder to loosen the crotch strap, lift the set, and open
> the valve than it is to just change regs, (which can be done no hands if
> need be). ... a diver who practiced opening the isolation valve in shallow
> water before setting out on a big dive. (sensible precaution!) ... [he
> needed to start another cylinder deep, but because his wings were fully
> inflated to offset depth squeeze of the gas bubbles in his wetsuit] he
> couldn't reach his valve! ... He didn't die because there was someone there

Reaching one's own cylinder valves over the shoulder is a contortionist job at
best and often impossible. I could about manage it when I started diving, with
a long thin 5.5" Submarine Products (Hexham in England) diameter cylinder
strapped straight to my back without a backpack shell. Now, with a backpack
shell, and a thicker cylinder, and more muscle bulk round my shoulders, I
can't reach my own valves any more than I can reach Mars or Cybertron. Why the
#%$& don't they make air scuba with the valves at the bottom and a long high
or medium pressure tube running up to the top of the cylinder(s), like in many
industrial compressed air breathing sets!? I can reach the bottom of my
cylinder easily while wearing it. In the 1960's there was a make of aqualung
called Normalair that had the valves at the bottom (made at Yeovil in
England). (It came with a fullface mask, about the first set I saw that had
its 2nd-stage at the mouth and not on the cylinder valve.) I have even heard
of people achieving this by mounting the cylinder in the stab upside down,
with a superlong hose to the 2nd-stage to reach the mouth.

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