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On your reply to the first point, I said doing it right, lower case letters, not Doing It Right as in DIR. However, I do recall seeing more than one of the DIR advocates that preach to the recreational crowd mention dual outlet valves as an advantage. Concerning your reply to the second point, actually most cave divers do what I'd term "recreational caving" in locations like Peacock, Ginnie, Telford, etc. In these locations finding a narcosis buzz is not all that easy a task, though not entirely impossibe. Without question Intro level cavers are not getting anywhere close to sites where deep air would likely be a consideration. One-third in, one-third out on a single doesn't amount to a significant penetration for most folks. On the third point, in many cases you can hear from which side it's coming from. If not, unless it's a really serious leak in which case your partner becomes your redundancy anyway, you can shut down one, if the leak presists, re-open it and shut down the other side. This isn't exactly nuclear physics and only takes a few seconds to execute. If you have a serious enough failure to drain a tank that fast either you're pushing your gas management too close or it's just not your day. Share gas with your partner and get the hell out of Dodge. Catastrophic gas leaks are not particularly common. More normal are little nusiance leaks that leave plenty of time to sort out or free-flows which leave no doubt as to which side needs shut down. If it's catastrophic in nature that's what your dive partner is for. In reference to, "You are either tech diving or not," Which was GI doing a few years ago when he reported on a 200ish dive on a single 80? As far as why aren't dual outlet valves a rec diving standard, what rec diving standard? The one tauting alternate airsource inflators? The one tauting low performance, low profile octopus regulators? The one favoring jacket style BCs or the one favoring "tech" BCs? There's a rec diving standard!? Simply put, there are divers that use both singles and doubles. It is a rediculous notion to suggest that they have a separate regulator system for each. It's not only rediculous, it's down right dangerous. Without even touching on the DIR vs Personal Preference arguement, a diver's configuration needs to remain consistent so everything is located in a common area. Dual outlet valves allow the diver to use the exact same regulator configuration diving a single tank that they'd use with a set of doubles. The only thing that really needs to change is the size of the wing being used. >The standard with tech diving is doubles and I'm afraid that you will have a rather hard time arguing that point with anybody with half a brain. Who's standard would that be? TDI's? IANTD's? GUE's? And who said it necessarily had to be a tech dive? A recreational diver conducting a limited penetration into a wreck resting in 100 fsw of water or less isn't better off with a bit of redundancy? A tech diver doing a kicked-back rec dive with a single is taking a serious risk using a dual-outlet valve? Gee, I did a little 100' dive today using a single that resulted in a whopping 10 minute hang, and got back on the boat with more than 1/3 of my gas supply left. Was that a tech dive or a rec dive? Does it really matter? Obviously I could've shared gas with one of my partners had the need arisen.... or used one of the hang whips at the hang line..... devil may care, stupid, dangerous dive? I don't think so. As far as pony bottles, we have a similar view. Dual outlet valves? We'll just have to agree to disagree and move on. Bob Decker www.SportDiverHQ.com -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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