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Dan Nafe <dan@sh*.ne*> wrote:
>On Thu, 9 Jun 1994, Term Structure Production wrote:
>> ...
>> Aqua Explorer, Dan Berg's company. These bands hold each tank by two
>> independant cam straps and are bolted onto a backplate. This allows
>> each tank to be carried seperately and allows for the pairing of disimilar
>> tanks. Useing these bands witha manifold is illadvised.
>
>All this talk of dissimilar tanks, doubles w/o manifolds and newbie
>technical divers makes me want to remind everyone:
>
> We all know of many "near-misses" and a couple of fatalities that
> could have been avoided had a dual-outlet manifold been
> properly used.
It seems to me that there are some failure modes involving o-ring
extrusion, breakage of the manifold itself, or serious air loss past a
valve prior to getting it closed that could jeapordize one's entire air
supply with a manifold.
Years ago a friend of mine had a manifold failure inside a wreck, and
calmly tapped his buddy on the ankle. She turned around, looked, he
gave the "out of air" signal, and she turned around and kept going. A
couple of kicks caught her and secured some air. It turned out afterwards
that she associated a diver being panicky with an out-of-air situation,
and he was too calm about it so it didn't click in her mind. To top this
off, she was a certified instructor. This is only one of four stories of
failure to respond to the out-of-air signal that I know of, and so I'm
somewhat into self-sufficiency and not needing to give that signal.
I've always been of the opinion that I want to have two completely
separate and independent air supplies on me, each of which is capable of
being used to complete the dive safely. On deeper dives, I use separate
doubles and make appropriate swaps.
Do a lot of divers happily dive with all their air under one manifold?
Or do many manifold divers take a large-ish pony bottle (30, 72, etc.)
along with their main double tanks?
Are there any statistics on fatalities due to catastrophic air supply
failure as opposed to fatalities due to mismanagement of multiple
supplies?
--
Anthony DeBoer A: "The Net goes right around the world."
adb@he*.re*.or* B: "Wouldn't want to haul them buggers in on a
uunet!geac!herboid!adb cold Sunday in February!"
-- CBC Air Farce explaining Internet to fishermen
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