How many can you carry ?
- Thread starter colinicky
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scuba_Mike
Member
Hi,
I try to stay with 2. Always sidemount
2x 7lt 300bar or 2x12lt 300bar
Some Time 3, and nearly never 4.
If 4 2x 7lt 300bar & 2x12lt 300bar, the 12lt sidemount and the 7lt normally mounted.
I try to stay with 2. Always sidemount
2x 7lt 300bar or 2x12lt 300bar
Some Time 3, and nearly never 4.
If 4 2x 7lt 300bar & 2x12lt 300bar, the 12lt sidemount and the 7lt normally mounted.
Alastair
New Member
Comfortably 5 is all I'd want to do assuming lots of helium. That's three on leashes and two up front. I would always be scootering with that many. Often dived with 3 and no scooter though. Worst I've done was 7 where we lacked helium in too many of the bottles and it was a pig.
Stage management can be taught, there are ways of making it more manageable. The 3 stage bottle drill that GUE teaches helps you learn how to move bottles from a leash to their normal place and equally how to leash cylinders away. That was critical to carrying more than 2.
Thanks
Al
Stage management can be taught, there are ways of making it more manageable. The 3 stage bottle drill that GUE teaches helps you learn how to move bottles from a leash to their normal place and equally how to leash cylinders away. That was critical to carrying more than 2.
Thanks
Al
OK, I can swim at a pace of 10 to 18m / min. Usually 15m / min
After doing experiments, 3m/min OFF swim pace for every stage added.
Certainly need practice / and nose clipping / leashes / help @ surface beyond 3 stages to get proficient.
I found beyond 3 stages, till I practiced, got no further due to increased gas usage.
I've been told by those a lot more experienced, that 3 stages is what most divers with some training can manage efficiently. The DIR guys seems to have some pretty good drills / routines for managing lots of stages...
Beyond this, serious consideration of staging (cave or on deco trapeze/bottom of shot and lining), team bailout, drop tanks, support divers, surface support, team bailout, team bailout in bigger dive teams, team bailout carry different/complimentary deco gasses (e.g. you take 50% I'll take 80%), using scooters instead of swimming etc is advised.
Using some of these techniques (and a medium sized dive team), got up to 18 stages without too much hassle, apart from carrying them all to the water! This included set up, tear down and dive in one day. With larger teams, many days, as many as you like...
Carried 5 to 7 stages via scooter, and friends have done this swimming. Requires quite a lot of practice / kit fettling to get the stage rigging set up just right... Not necessarily different, but adjusted for you/cylinder gasses etc to sit/lie properly.
What experience with the dual rebreather and a little experience with sidemount rb's has taught me, is that 3 stages is the break even point i.e. beyond this Id say use a bailout BOB, its more practical. One/Two/Three stages, learn to deal with them/practice to get slick, it more practical with stages. Also depends on budget/frequency of use etc.
If solo, consideration of margins, splitting gasses between stages to create redundancy is a consideration, perhaps as well as viability of team bailout in larger groups/poor vis / not fixed lines etc.
Beyond 2 stages / large stages, steels are not practical in terms of available buoyancy...
YMMV, just my rough rules of thumb / limited experience. People highly skilled / practiced perhaps can handle more stages routinely.
The one thing I learned the hard way was NOT to compromise on volume of and appropriate bailout. Its expensive, frustrating, harder work, but critical.
Once doing dive that require many stages, they're usually deep / long bottom times and/or a combo of both.
Personally, when I started looking @ numbers for +5 mins/+5m, the gas volume needed for deco increased very significantly. I also think 1/3rds etc MAY not be enough to account for increased breathing rate, long swims, delay/confusion etc, so I wanted to use a BOB / staged rebreather to give a LOT of gas/time margin. One issue Im still wrestling with is how to safely stage a rb, and have the confidence its working if I come back to it.
May not be economically feasible, but food for thought, no bad thing to be generous with the bailout...
Im honesty I've done very few of those dives, so would be interested to hear from those more experienced.
After doing experiments, 3m/min OFF swim pace for every stage added.
Certainly need practice / and nose clipping / leashes / help @ surface beyond 3 stages to get proficient.
I found beyond 3 stages, till I practiced, got no further due to increased gas usage.
I've been told by those a lot more experienced, that 3 stages is what most divers with some training can manage efficiently. The DIR guys seems to have some pretty good drills / routines for managing lots of stages...
Beyond this, serious consideration of staging (cave or on deco trapeze/bottom of shot and lining), team bailout, drop tanks, support divers, surface support, team bailout, team bailout in bigger dive teams, team bailout carry different/complimentary deco gasses (e.g. you take 50% I'll take 80%), using scooters instead of swimming etc is advised.
Using some of these techniques (and a medium sized dive team), got up to 18 stages without too much hassle, apart from carrying them all to the water! This included set up, tear down and dive in one day. With larger teams, many days, as many as you like...
Carried 5 to 7 stages via scooter, and friends have done this swimming. Requires quite a lot of practice / kit fettling to get the stage rigging set up just right... Not necessarily different, but adjusted for you/cylinder gasses etc to sit/lie properly.
What experience with the dual rebreather and a little experience with sidemount rb's has taught me, is that 3 stages is the break even point i.e. beyond this Id say use a bailout BOB, its more practical. One/Two/Three stages, learn to deal with them/practice to get slick, it more practical with stages. Also depends on budget/frequency of use etc.
If solo, consideration of margins, splitting gasses between stages to create redundancy is a consideration, perhaps as well as viability of team bailout in larger groups/poor vis / not fixed lines etc.
Beyond 2 stages / large stages, steels are not practical in terms of available buoyancy...
YMMV, just my rough rules of thumb / limited experience. People highly skilled / practiced perhaps can handle more stages routinely.
The one thing I learned the hard way was NOT to compromise on volume of and appropriate bailout. Its expensive, frustrating, harder work, but critical.
Once doing dive that require many stages, they're usually deep / long bottom times and/or a combo of both.
Personally, when I started looking @ numbers for +5 mins/+5m, the gas volume needed for deco increased very significantly. I also think 1/3rds etc MAY not be enough to account for increased breathing rate, long swims, delay/confusion etc, so I wanted to use a BOB / staged rebreather to give a LOT of gas/time margin. One issue Im still wrestling with is how to safely stage a rb, and have the confidence its working if I come back to it.
May not be economically feasible, but food for thought, no bad thing to be generous with the bailout...
Im honesty I've done very few of those dives, so would be interested to hear from those more experienced.
Dave Sutton
Banned
^^ What Ken says.
Right down to the aging shoulders (both of which have had surgeries).
Ken, come out to the Great Lakes and dive with us. It's lots easier to deep dive if you can pfaff around snapping on your bailout at 20 feet in crystal clear water and no current before doing a 300 footer rather than dealing with it on deck. There's a reason divers leave NJ and either go cave diving in Florida or come to the lakes as they get older and hopefully wiser...
Dave
.
Right down to the aging shoulders (both of which have had surgeries).
Ken, come out to the Great Lakes and dive with us. It's lots easier to deep dive if you can pfaff around snapping on your bailout at 20 feet in crystal clear water and no current before doing a 300 footer rather than dealing with it on deck. There's a reason divers leave NJ and either go cave diving in Florida or come to the lakes as they get older and hopefully wiser...
Dave
.
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Dave Sutton
Banned
Al,
For those of us who do not worship at the GUE, can you give a short essay on the techniques used? Might be instructive even to we, the unwashed. I am sure it's somehow more than simply nose-clipping the two rear cylinders to the lower attachment point, which is our fallback plan when carrying four.
Thanks,
Dave
.
DSix36
Well-Known Member
The most I have carried is 6. That was more than just a PITA. 2 were standard sidemounted, 2 more were above my sidemounted tanks, and the last 2 were clipped via waist dring and shoulder dring.
Swimming with all 6 was a very long and slow process, the scooter saved my butt on that.
I am also interested in the hearing about GUE methods if someone would be willing to share that info.
4 tanks is pretty easy to manage.
Swimming with all 6 was a very long and slow process, the scooter saved my butt on that.
I am also interested in the hearing about GUE methods if someone would be willing to share that info.
4 tanks is pretty easy to manage.
kwinter
PITA
I would love to come out and play with you and Jitka. But I'm pretty sure I will be having shoulder replacement surgery within the next few weeks if I can work out the scheduling. Maybe with a new bionic shoulder I can manage more bailouts. :juggle:
Alastair
New Member
Hi Dave,
Good point!
First step is the use of leashes:
Really simple to make - some hose to essentially keep the loop open and a double ender. This is clipped to a hip d-ring with the nose clip of the stage clipped into the leash. There is an alternate design some people prefer too
So why bother? Well the goal is to get the cylinders further back and sitting on your legs. This lets you carry more cylinders and have the weight more central so you don't end up off balance.
Here's a (old) video of Clare moving cylinders around - known as a 3 stage drill. But once you can do that - you can add more cylinders to the leash and more leashes.
[youtube]KjdAS6Id_4A[/youtube]
It avoids lots of stages being up front, it allows less clips to the hip d-ring. I'd recommend no more than 3 to a leash or the leash gets too heavy if you bring it round in front of you. Adding helium to the stages helps. At the end of a dive it can be like holding a bunch of balloons!
Can't find any decent pictures of us with the gear - I don't take the good camera on the big dives
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JONT
New Member
6 AL80's is ok when scootering, 2 properly side mounted that don't get dropped, 2 up front and 2 on a leash, rich Helium mixes help a lot, I've also been playing with 2 LP50's up front instead of AL 80's and that seems to work well.
Obviously the big issue aside from task loading is buoyancy, I'm curious to see how LP120's do but dont have any.
Garth
Tunnel Vision
I have 2 HP 120 PST's for sale if you want them... ;-)
JONT
New Member
Sorry Faber LP120's
JONT
New Member
Thanks Ken,
How do they trim out in the water, I've "heard" interesting things .....
You want monsters a few weeks ago I ran across an old Bouchat 190 or 200 some obscene sized tank.
Jon, IMHO, steel bailout tanks on CCR usually provide unnecessary weight and typically don't trim as well as aluminum bailout tanks. Some people will say that they need the additional weight with heavy undergarments, salt water, etc. but one important thing they don't consider is what is going to happen if they have to hand off a steel bailout tank to a buddy in an emergency? Good luck trying to maintain neutral buoyancy!
Just muy $02, but I have never liked steel bailout tanks. Love steel sidemount for OC for my primary tanks, but I almost never use steel deco/stage/etc. tanks for OC either. Primary yes, bailout no.
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kwinter
PITA
Jon -
The LP120s are from my early OC cavern/cave days used as singles with Y valve. They were beasts to deal with. I'm nearly 6 feet tall, and the bottoms hit me behind my knees when I was frog kicking hard. They now serve as my O2 bank and have not left my basement in years except for hydro.
Randy -
I'm one of those guys that prefers steel bailouts to reduce the ridiculous amount of weight I need. They trim out great. With aluminum tanks I have to cam strap weights to the bottoms to keep them from getting floaty.
I know what you mean about buoyancy if I donate them. But I don't like to even think about donating a bailout tank. I'll stick with you or donate the 5 foot hose I have on all of my bailouts. But there would have to be a damn good reason for me to give up my bailout. Even swapping with a half-empty aluminum tank at depth wouldn't screw me up too badly. Might have trouble as I ascend further. I think most people don't carry enough weight to account for a bailout scenario, even if they plan to dump their empties. But that's a different issue that has been discussed plenty.
The LP120s are from my early OC cavern/cave days used as singles with Y valve. They were beasts to deal with. I'm nearly 6 feet tall, and the bottoms hit me behind my knees when I was frog kicking hard. They now serve as my O2 bank and have not left my basement in years except for hydro.
Randy -
I'm one of those guys that prefers steel bailouts to reduce the ridiculous amount of weight I need. They trim out great. With aluminum tanks I have to cam strap weights to the bottoms to keep them from getting floaty.
I know what you mean about buoyancy if I donate them. But I don't like to even think about donating a bailout tank. I'll stick with you or donate the 5 foot hose I have on all of my bailouts. But there would have to be a damn good reason for me to give up my bailout. Even swapping with a half-empty aluminum tank at depth wouldn't screw me up too badly. Might have trouble as I ascend further. I think most people don't carry enough weight to account for a bailout scenario, even if they plan to dump their empties. But that's a different issue that has been discussed plenty.
alin
New Member
For me the answer it's simple: as many as necessary to bring me back to the surface, from the deepest point of the dive, in the last minute on the bottom. Diving ccr can be tricky, you have plenty of gas and this can lead to very extended bottom times but I always bring enough bail out to bring me up safe.