Sun Jan 27, 2013 8:55 pm
I have had only a few tiny instances of gear failures in my brief 11 years of diving, and those air integrated octos were the cause of one of them. I hate air integrated octos, because when they fail they either leak into the second stage, which causes a free flow and means that you lose your inflator when you disconnect it OR, and this is worse, they dump air into your BC bladder, like mine did. It kept trying to pull me to the surface until I disconnected it. I was on dive master duty, and I had to bingo the dive because I had no alternate air soure for my students.
I think the air integrated octo is a solution to a nonexistent problem. I creates a single point of failure for two things.
Having said that, I rarely use modern gear at all unless I must. I prefer vintage gear only, and I don't use octos, computers, or anything else when I dive vintage.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. -JYC