People keep asking me about changing over to diving EANx, so I thought I'd put a few lines in place here. I'm still in the process of sorting things out - so bear with me. Afterall, I'm the first in the club to do this, so I deserve a bit of sympathy.
The basic premise behind my kit setup is that I can't afford two sets of kit, nor can I afford (or even really want) a twinset. The logic behind this is that, yes, it's best practise for long and deep dives, but most of my diving is club diving on the rib - mostly shallow, mostly no deco. Anyway, It's my decision, so there!
okay then, so basically the setup is 15/12s for back gas, an air pony as a bail out, and a 50% pony for accelerated deco as and when required.
My main tanks have been cleaned for use up to 40% - this cost me 20 quid each for the cleaning, and a further 20 quid for the adaption kits - green knobs and stuff. I'm not really sure of the benefit of all this, but it seems standard - I guess everyone's just covering their own arses. This cleaning needs to be performed every year according to IANTD requirements, but I don't think it's a legal thing yet.
My main reg hasn't been modified - in fact Scubapro have taken all their mod kits off the market - either a cunning plan to get you to buy their Nitrox regs, or their scared of litigation. Anyway, no mods, but it's been stripped and cleaned, and all traces of silicon removed - I had this done in advance at the last service.
All pretty straight forward so far especially as I've left my pony bottle and reg. untouched - eighty quid and ready to dive Nitrox. The optional extra though is the deco bottle - not really necessary for most of the club diving, but handy to have around for the ocasional uses.
This is where it all starts to get a bit awkward. The easy bit's buying the kit - O2 service 3l pony one hundred pounds, Spiro Calypso Oxygen regulator one hundred and thirty, O2 clean SPG on 6" hose 51 quid!!. Bolt it all together and - hey presto! - now what?
Thanks to some nice web sites, especially Sue, Graham and Andy's GAS diving site, I've seen a few piccies of stage bottles, and Hog setups, so it's time to have a go! First things first. D rings on jacket. Not a problem. 2.50 buys a couple of stainless rings that I can just thread on the shoulder straps - much cheaper than buying a tech jacket!
Now the bottle - rope around the neck to tie a clip on and a big jubilee clip around the base all sounds a good idea - now, where can I buy a big jubilee clip? - all together that's another 15 quid - it's all mounting up. A piccie would be good here wouldn't it?
The big problem now is just what to do about the bottom end of the bottle. After much experimenting in the pool involving just about every contortion possible in a weightless environment I settled on the following - attach bottom of deco bottle to bottom of main cylinder by means of clip threaded onto lowest pony strap. This means that the deco bottle is kind of sitting on my left side under my arm - doesn't sound too comfortable, but seems to work ok. The big problem is getting things tight enough in to stop them swinging about, without being too constrictive.
Now, off to the Farnes to try it all out ......
We all know the benefits of redundant breathing gas supplies, and insist on a diving setup that accomodates this. It was pointed out recently that we should probably also insist on redundant buoyancy controls.
Divers with twinsets have suit- and jacket-buoyancy feeds from different first stages - there's no reason we can't do this too with a pony bottle setup.
Feeding the secondary buoyancy control from the pony bottle ensures that you have surface buoyancy when you might need it most. Routing the hose across the top of the jacket also ensures that it tucks away out of sight. Try it!
The theory behind this comes from caving and wreck penetration dives - in an out of air situation in these cases there's no room to exit face-to-face. The 2m hose is on the primary reg and this is the one that's donated.
For our purposes the longer hose simply means that you have more space when you need it - you know from pool training how close you have to normally be to donate.
2m hoses cost 28 GPB. Try it - I am!
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