Sender: GarlooEnt@ao*.co*  Date: 1/16/99 5:43 AM

>i'm trying real hard to follow some of your lines of thinking & i can't help
>finding some cotradictions.
>you want people to have a redundant system (but it's either doubles or a 6cu
>ft pony). 
>       i submit that a 6 cu ft is insufficient for just about any safe
>emergency situation. please remember we are not talking about a "master" such
>as yourself. we are talking about a relativly new diver just getting
>him/herself used to all of the intracasies of diving & improving his own
>abilities in the process. he/her probablly has a high sac rate to start with
>-how far do you think they will get on a 6ft tank if they have to come up 
>from
>depth & do some kind of safety (or god forbid they got forced into a real 
>deco
>situation)stop?

I can see that despite 1000's of incident free dives a day on single 80's 
all over the world, there are a certain number of paranoids who are 
obsessed with "redundancy" or doing dives with singles that they probably 
should be doing on doubles. And these people have hundreds, no, thousands 
of justifications as to why this is a fine thing to do.

OK, Fine. I will bend to the will of the masses and modify my argument: 
If you have to have redundancy and you need more than a 6cuft pony then 
you should be diving doubles. How's that?

>you see no problem using the "stove Pipe" type lights that weigh in at 16 lbs
>or better & are worn on one side of you body(on the boat these a somewhat out
>of balance & can be awkward for some divers).
>you see the concept of "pony redundancy" a practice in protecting against a
>once in a blue moon problem.

It's a question of balance. The canister light is down low on your belt 
and has a stabilizing effect if anything. Any weight or mass you have 
above your center of buoyancy, will off your balance terribly, it's a 
matter of physics. And the 8-10lbs of negative buoyancy a 30 has is 
perched high and off to one side. I sure noticed it when I dove. I have 
even noticed some divers trying to negate the effect by mounting their 
pony "shark fin" style on the back of their single. Unfortunately the are 
only making the problem worse doing it this way.

As an aside, those DiveRite "vweights" made of bags full of shot you are 
supposed to mount on the outside of your doubles, rather than between the 
tank and backplate where your weight is supposed to go, are bogus. Don't 
waste your money on them, I have already heard complaints that they make 
your doubles top-heavy.

>your original post attempted  or recomended that if they were going to use a
>pony then they should dive DIR system. don't you think that the the diver we
>are taking of here that this is a slightly overzealous approach. rememwe 
>reall
>don't want to overburden the new diver to the point he gets scared or
>intimidated into not diving any more.

IHMO the management burden of a pony is much worse than a set of 
manifolded doubles. Keep in mind that you don't have to use 104's or 
120's for a set of doubles. You can have the benefits of a proper set of 
doubles by using a pair of 45 or 72 cuft tanks and have light weight as 
well.

There is a company out who recognized the problems of management and task 
loading with a pony and attempted to solve the problem. Unfortunately 
their product made the problem even worse, it is a real super duper pony 
system. Perhaps you've seen it advertised, it is an unholy nightmare of 
HP hoses and cheap 1st stages. At first I wondered who on earth would buy 
such a fiasco of engineering, but after this discussion thread I see that 
they will probably make a million on it.

>you mention divers "croaking left & right" -- take a good look at the
>statistics on this & you will obviously be suprised to find that the "right &
>left "guys only reprsent less than 10% of the losses in any given year.
>purhapse some of the other deaths (& bends cases) could have been assisted
>with a pony.  the answer to that by the way is no one knows for sure, but
>that's whar DIR is all about -being prepared for the problem.

So why make the problem worse? An aluminum 80 has a built-in safety 
factor, it is very hard to get bent using these on a 2 dive day. This is 
why thousand of dive operations use this system. This is also why 
thousands of dive operations don't like ponies, they kill the safety 
factor.

I also don't understand why the simple concept of not doing dives where 
you can't get out of trouble easily without the aid of a pony is so hard 
to swallow among you guys. It does work or scuba diving would have been 
litigated out of existence  by now.

>BTW pointing out to someone that the way they have mounted there pony is
>causing them difficulty - is not being the macho guy - most people will take
>it as help & not criticism-it all depends how you present it.
>calling them or implying that they a f--k ups due to there gear usually gets
>the wrong response.

I will have to admit that I don't like to offer suggestions unless 
someone asks me first (on the boat that is). If they are a friend and I 
am truly concerned for their life, I might say something. I really, truly 
respect people's right to dive whatever kind of rig they decide to use 
and I don't have the authority or inclination to police or kabitz, nor do 
I look down on them. My only thought is "how do they stand it, diving 
that way?"

BUT on this forum, I like to stand on my soapbox and shout and curse at 
stuff I think is wrong. I piss people off, but for every irate post I get 
I am sure that I have got some people out there thinking about the topic 
at hand and hopefully going out to their garage this winter and taking a 
real critical look at their pony rig.

>i hope i've got most of your arguments in here
>
>the bottom line here is that we are all trying to get the diver to advance to
>the point that they recognize the value of doubles, & develope the desire to
>get them.
>pushing them into them to soon creats more problems then they(the newer 
>diver)
>can handle.
>a slower transition in my experience seems to make them better divers when 
>the
>make the switch.
>there are plenty of things to argue over i would rather take the similarities
>we have & move from there. 
>hank

I wish that you guys would watch the SkyCliffe tape and observe closely 
the way the divers rigs evolve from pony bottles and other junk of 6 
years ago to a DIR configuration. This is a classic situation of divers 
doing something on single tanks that they should not have been doing. 
Through no coercion on my part, these divers realized that there is a 
better way and figured it out, all by themselves, that the pony stuff had 
to go. Why are we so behind the times up here?

 Jim

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