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Dr. Ali Lawrie asks for field experience of manifolds vs two independent cylinders. I personally dive with independent cylinders, when I'm wearing them back mounted its quite simple to turn the valves on or off, simply release the buckle around your waist and across your chest (thus loosening your setup) and then push the tanks up so that the valves are now above your head and not behind it. Its actually quite easy. Another author stated .... >Problem with 2 independent cylinders: A friend of mine nearly died of the >bends in Lake Superior some years back as a result of not opening the valve >on his second cylinder. A small but critical error! He ran out of air at >140 during an ascent from a 190 for 20 exposure. >Every equipment configuration has its problems, I guess. This is not a problem with the configuration but the diver, firstly both supplies should have been tested before leaving the surface. Secondly the point of wearing 2 tanks is not just to give yourself a huge airsupply but some redundancy, you don't breath out of one tank until its empty and then switch to the other, if your friend had managed his air properly he would have switched to the second air supply realised it was off and switched back to his original supply which should have had plenty of air remaining to return to the surface. Tim Payne (tpayne@cs*.ed*.au*) -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@opal.com'. Send subscription/archive requests to `techdiver-request@opal.com'.
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