<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14723000#post14723000 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tgreene
My primary 2nd will still free flow for about 2 seconds until it's fully flooded upon first entering the water if it's not in my mouth where it should be, but I can live with that. It's already been tuned back quite a bit from where it was when I first bought it, so I figure I'm already conserving quite a bit of air in that manner... And it's STILL a better breather than the others that I tried. 
Yep, that's pretty much my experience, too, with regs - I tend to detune them quite a bit so that they're not so sensitive.
For me, ANY freeflow would be too much, so I would STILL detune those regs - but of course, it might increase your work of breathing slightly... I don't think enough to notice, but you might feel differently.
Old/shot/badly tuned/cheap regs all tend to breathe hard, and they'll STILL freeflow, too... My bet is that's what you were noticing with your buddys' regs. Good, solid regs tend to have a lot of room between "freeflow" and "breathe crappy" and tend to be easier to tune. Personally, I'd never purchase a second stage that doesn't have TWO controls on it... BOTH a cracking pressure (the dial) and the venturi assist (the lever - sometimes called a "predive switch"). These two generally give the diver the ability to tune "on the fly," assuming that the regs are set up correctly and are in a good state of repair in the first place.
By the way... If you find that not much changes when you play with these controls, wait until you're 100' under water to play with them. When the air coming from them is compressed due to the higher ambient pressures at depth, there is a much larger difference.
Those flat second stages sold specifically as "octopuses" with no controls on them suck, and they remind you by requiring you to suck a lot to get any gas from them.
I avoid diving with people who use them - obviously they have no intention of giving me a breathable reg if I need it from them... Which tells me a lot about their attitude.
Even our DM's didn't have snorkels on, and our Instructor said he only wears them during training dives as required by PADI. 
Yep, therein lies the cold, hard fact about snorkels. Glad you're with an instructor that both uses his brain AND does what he has to in order to stay "legal."
Like I said, I think snorkels are great... They're great for SNORKELING. I don't think they belong on a scuba diver. The fact that PADI requires them (not even optional) tells me that their thought processes and attitudes are a bit off.
The Torrent LED is substantially smaller than the shoe box sized C8's that I was initially looking at, and with 8-AA's it's still mighty powerful too. 
Nice choice. Good reasoning, too.
Here's the funny part: When it comes to batteries, AAA's, AA's, C's and D's all put out the same voltage... So they'll all light the same typical halogen lamp the same brightness. The advantage of going with a larger battery is that the light will last a lot longer... You get a lot longer life out of D cells than AAA cells. Now that halogen lamps are out and LEDs are in (which use a lot less juice for the same lumens), EVERYTHING lasts longer than it did before, so it only makes sense to take advantage and go with a smaller light with smaller batteries.
Optionally, you could go with the same size and get A TON longer battery life, but why, when you can go with a smaller, more easily stowed light? Smaller lights equipped with LED's are also less expensive, more durable, and give this great, funky-white light that's more true-to-color than old, big halogens.
Anyway, good pick.
I'm always open to your suggestions as you know, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you're going to suggest moving from the AL80 to a Steel 100+ where I'll gain additional air, be able to remove weight from my BC, streamline my setup, and not require an additional set of regs... I really like the way YOU think! 
Well, there IS that... Not exactly what I had in mind, but yeah, a much better idea than using a pony.
You'd also have the advantage of carrying one less tank with you, having to annually VIP and hydro one less tank, and avoid the drag and complications of a pony bottle.
Aluminum 100's and 120's also have the same buoyancy characteristics as the commonplace aluminum 80... So you could use it and switch over to a rented aluminum 80 when you're on vacation so you don't have to bring your own tank... Without having to change your weighting and trim.
...But you said a "steel 100+". I have some reservations about that:
Be sure that you don't select a tank that's too heavy for your setup, and definitely dive the tank before you buy... I personally find that using steel tanks while diving in a wetsuit make me too heavy unless I'm diving a 7mm suit or a drysuit... Especially if I'm doubled. What's worse is that they don't trim well for me unless I'm wearing a 7mm or drysuit... I tend to "turtle" if I'm diving a 3mm and a heavy steel tank. Your mileage may vary. Dive the tank before you buy - the steels are very expensive, and you can often buy several aluminum tanks for the same price, which will trim out better (depends on you) and prevent overweighting.
There is a sort of "hybrid" tank... And they're being pushed by a lot of shops, hard. They often cost upwards of 3 or 4 times as much as a comparable aluminum tank... The "high pressure" steel. Here's how that works: They rate the tank at 4200 psi, rather than the industry standard 3000 or 2400 psi, effectively getting a lot more gas into them. Consequently, a "high pressure 100" is really an '80 at 3000 psi, and because they're made of steel, the walls can be a little thinner. Therefore, they're a little more negative in the water than comparable aluminums, a few pounds lighter out of the water, and overall have smaller dimensions. All of these things sound great until you find out that most shops will not fill tanks past 3000 or 3300 psi. Now you're stuck with a very expensive '80, and when you rent a tank somewhere else, you still have to readjust your weighting and trim to get it right.
My advice: Stick to aluminum 80's as long as you're diving wet. Reserve the "LP" steel tanks for when/if you go dry. Avoid the high cost (not to mention the need to reweight, and the frustration of having a tank that nobody will fill all the way) of high pressure steels until they're a little more accepted in the industry.
Besides, aluminum 80's make great stage bottles, which you'll need when you get cave-trained... You just don't know that yet.
Avoid the pony, too, and learn to sling an aluminum 40... That way, later on, you can easily switch to decompression procedures if you go that way. Better yet would be to learn to dive a set of doubles... Aluminum 80 doubles, in your case, which make a very nice, compact and enjoyable system.
You don't know it yet, but there's some really cool advantages to doubles... One of them is that you now have TWO first stages as well as two second stages... So if one of them fails, you're redundant. Doubles are also a basic prerequisite for any kind of overhead diving (especially because of the redundant first stages), so you might as well get used to them now. Lastly, think about this for a moment... Normally, you dive your first dive of the day, and then switch out tanks when you hit 500 psi, right? Well, think about it this way: When you dive doubles, you don't have to switch tanks out, and you get to dive with that last 500 psi with you on the second dive... Effectively, you now have 3500 psi on your second dive - everyone else still only has 3000.
Thinking about it more logically, you're diving your second dive with about 13 cuft more gas than everyone else.
What size was your pony again?
...And you'll still have the advantage of redundant first stages, DOUBLE the amount of gas as your buddy on the first dive, the "learning curve" of doubles (which will give you a huge advantage when you get into overhead diving), AND... You'll look cool and "tech."
