To make the move to twins and decompression diving requires that the
diver already posess certain essential skills.  Proper gas management
is one of these.  To require a pony bottle when using a single tank
means one of two things:  either you are consistently mismanaging your
gas supply on a single, and thus need the pony as a crutch, or you are
diving in circumstances that genuinely require the redundancy and
failure survival options of a redundant air source and regulator.  If
the latter is the case (and seems to be according to the pro-pony
arguments), twin tanks, when combined with an isolation manifold offer
many times more component failure survival probability than a pony
bottle, which is simply an independent doubles configuration, but with
mismatched tank capacities.  I shouldn't have to point out the obvious
stupidity of this.  If you need the options, but not the gas, manifold
a set of 40's or 50's together.  The only argument against doing this
is the expense, but then economics should really not come into play
when dealing with safety issues.  If you can not afford to use the most
optimum gear configuration possible for any particular dive, don't do
the dive.

-Sean
DIR(ODDIAA)


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