Who disagrees with DIR and why?

[JoelW]

Let's go with everyone having working equipment in an OOA situation and work it from there. While I have never been in a restriction that required me to exit behind another diver who was breathing off of my 7' primary, I have found in a couple of air-share experiences, all due to the other person free-flowing, that having a hose longer than 3' or 40", whichever it is, has been beneficial during the event. I can just as easily go with a 5' or a 6' hose except that a 5' is a bit short for me to wrap and a 6' is not quite long enough to go under a light.

The big thing about the length is that it gives both divers room to operate. I would much rather have space to face the other diver, swim comfortably side by side, be able to more easily deal with equipment issues, etc. Given that I think that a long hose is of more use, why don't I make it my backup then? One reason is that if the 7' backup were stowed in something like bungies I would have a tough time putting it away if it were deployed and I didn't need it. That is not necessarily an uncommon occurance. In one of the air shares the other person's valve was shutdown. After a few minutes it was reopened and not free-flowing. We exited with him breathing his own reg. I re-looped my primary with no help. When I have divemastered advanced classes at Wazee during the cooler months I have put my backup in on the deep dive and had my primary in one hand ready to hand off because I have seen several free flows below 80' there. When the class heads up I re-loop the primary and go back to breathing off of it.

So, I have found a longer hose to be useful in practice, not just because I read it on the internet somewhere and am trying to emulate some "dive gods".

Joel