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As a Swiss cave diver I am used to dive in cold water and therefore I
occasionally use argon to inflate my dry suit. 

Someone asked if argon was really useful and suggested if it would not be
easier to put on more weight and to inflate more air into the suit. Well
IMHO adding more air is not very usefull because most of the air gets trapped
in the upper part of the suit and with too much air in the suit there will be
a considerable loss of comfort. On the other hand argon *really* makes a 
difference and it is worth to be used at least during decompression stops.

I use a 4 l 200 bar tank (don't know how much cubic feet this is, but I let you
champions in metric-imperial do the conversion) which is either attached to
the main tanks or on some cave dives left at the first decompression stop.
Nor I nor any other of the cave divers I know has ever experienced skin
symptoms with argon. One of them even used a mix of CO2 and argon for the 
decompression stops.

Argon supply should not be a great problem as it is commonly used for welding.
To fill the pony bottle with argon we first top of from the argon supply tank
(usually a 10 l 200 bar tank) and then if the pressure is too low we pump the
argon through our compressor by connecting the argon supply bottle to the
air intake of the compressor via and old modified scuba regulator. This
modification is quite easy. The first stage doesn't have to be modified. The
expiration valve of the second stage has to be blocked and instead of the
mout piece you connect a flexible hose which shall be connected to the air
intake of the compressor.

There is one more important thing: Don't just use a standard scuba regulator
with only an inflator hose and without second stage. In case of a first stage
failure there will be no more overpression valve and the inflator hose may
explode. So either leave the second stage and make sure nobody could breath
on it, or use a Poseidon overpressure valve which is simply screwed into one
of the low pressure exits of the first stage.

Happy (warm) diving

Michael Walz
walz@el*.ep*.ch*
walz@la*.ep*.ch*

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