Posted by John Walker on January 08, 2001 at 17:21:04:
In Reply to: Re: Why DIR? posted by Randy54 on January 08, 2001 at 15:03:47:
Randy, with the back-up reg just below your chin (on a necklace) you should be able to grab it with your mouth. This is highley benificial if your hands are occupied with managing an out of air diver, or your hands are full of equipment, or even if you get keyholed in a restricted passage, which is quit common in advanced diving. Its to easy for me to ignore!
Also if you are able to use your hands it only requires a quick flip into your mouth. If you take a look at most conventional equipment setups you will notice that bach-up regulators (octopus) are commonly being dragged and flailing on a divers side or they might be attached via some sort of gimmick to any number of locations. Maybe the lower right hand side of the BCD, even the left side. Could be near the chest on either side as well. Sometimes their on a spring loaded devices or even devices that make it real hard to retreive the regulator, and even pockets designed to tuck the octopus neatly away. Real smart,ha?
In a stressful situation such as with an out of air diver, seconds matter. And looking for or fighting to retrieve a regulator could mean the difference of a drowning or not.
One other thing that I will share with you is that an inflator can become a third air source. This is somethoing that take a lot of patients and is commonly taught to t--- divers.
Many diver get effended with the neckless idea. My guess is that its because they feel they have waisted good money on one of these gimmicks that some dive store sold them on.
BUT, I have to thank those gimmicks for keeping the dive stores open. Oh well, chosse your weapon.
JW