Spare Air questions

[Omicron]

If you are doing solo diving, definitely scratch the spare air.

A spare air is good for one thing only - ensuring that you can survive a CESA. A CESA could be (I'm imagining here, never having had to do one due to good planning) a rather stressful experience on one breath...or, maybe no breath if you go to take a deep breath and find nothing in your tank.

A spare air will give you a couple of breaths - enough to get you to the surface from recreational depths doing a 60ft/min ascent.

That's about all they will really do for you though.

Start looking at the cost!! A 3cf Spare Air runs around $200. You can get a small pony and halfway-decent reg for not too much more than that. And then you are talking about 30-40cf of air - enough to let you get to the shallows, do a safety stop, and get out nice and slow.

My preference is to use a big tank as well - I use E8 130's, with H-Valves and two regulators. If one fails, I can shut it off and go to my backup.

It's up to you - if all you are looking for is a few breaths while you are doing a CESA, go for the Spare Air. Otherwise, go for a pony system!!!

If you are interested to see how they hook up to your current rig, here is one example of a good system: