"spare air" v pony bottle

[dive1qdive]

I saw a thing yesterday advertising a mini tank called a "spair air" tank. It is only small, and I guess contains enough air just to get to the surface safely in an out of air situation, and was wondering whethere this would be a better choice than a pony bottle.
I'm not doing technical stuff... so what do you reckon?

[Dive Bunnie]

I guess if you are travelling a lot, so need lightweight gear, and certainly not planning to do deep or technical dives, then this may be a handy option to have on the side, as an extra precaution.

However, whatever self rescue items you invest in, I would really advise that you continued to dive as though the option to use it was not there. The spare air, would only be suitable as a real last minute bail out in preferance to doing a CESA. I would still ensure that I always did the usual pre-dive checks (including my O rings), dived with my buddy, and kept a close watch on my air throughout, it's not exactly like running out of petrol is it?

For the best self rescue air option, I would invest in a decent pony bottle, that gives you enough air to get out of a sticky situation as well as to the surface. But I guess some protection is better than none.

[Steve]

There was a lot of debate regarding the spare air years ago - the general school of thought was that people who had it would rely on it (whether they admited it or not) and in an out of air situation, panicking, rapid breathing it would prove to be next to useless and cause more problems than it could potentially solve - (this was generally >15metres).

As DB said it would probably have it's use on recreational holidays - but I've never seen/heard of an incident in Sharm, for example, where it would have been seen to have helped.

Pony's are better than nothing but the general opinion seems to be that if you have a single 12l you'd be better off with twin 7l's on your back and trained in using them. You'd have better balance underwater, less weights needed round the waist and you'd have more redundancy. Obviously you're talking more expense but it's preferable - I have the impression that there less and less people using pony's these days, generally new divers or clubs that have them laying around.

[squidmiss]

Or you could go whole hog n have the twins n slings… overkill? Whaddya reckon? ;D