What can we say about your scuba equipment? I guess that one could say that I have the best stuff on the market and it’s my life support. It’s your life support too and you have to depend on it every time you go diving.

 Here we go again G. L. talking about more training. Yes, training is the key to most all success and in this case your life depends on the equipment you use. I would suggest that you take a class in equipment care and maintenance. This will give you a lot of information on how to care for and protect your equipment. The equipment I use is inspected annually at a shop by those who can tear into the workings of it. Not only do I not have time to do that, I just think that these men and women have a lot more knowledge then I do to get the job done and done right.

I would not dive on a regulator that I had taken apart myself and put back together. I have had them fail for one reason or another. Once after a dive, my dive buddy’s regulator fell apart. What a surprise as we were getting undressed and here are parts of a regulator in the back of the truck.  We looked at it several times and found a crack in the face of it. Not expensive to replace but a bad regulator can cause a lot of trouble at 150 feet; or even 10 feet. 

 Always check the equipment you are going to use, even if your dive buddy has checked it, and he should. I like to check equipment the same way every time. This way you will get used to the inspection process.  Notice that I did not say routine. Nothing about inspecting your scuba equipment is ever routine. 

 The equipment you have reflects the types of diving you are doing or are going to do. We talked about this issue several times in the past about buying equipment. I have a great dive buddy. If he has it I probably do also and that’s because of the type of diving we are interested in. There is a lot of stuff out there including dive computers.  Don’t think that new computers can’t go bad. I have had one go bad twice, and my dive buddy three times. The same computer dumped us just after twenty or so dives; that’s why we have a second one. 

 If a diver learns the proper care of the equipment it will take care of him or her for a long time. I have seen a lot of divers like Lloyd Bridges with older model minimal equipment and they are still diving with it. No joke, I would not have an idea as to how it works. It was so funny; here we are deep with all this fancy stuff, and here he comes with almost nothing. What a treat to see. I guess the reason I brought this up is that the diver who had been diving much longer then I have been on earth took care of his dive equipment over the years and he had no reason to change or upgrade to something else. It’s like most everything that we have that has working parts.  We have to take care of it so that it will last longer and save us lots of money.  We know as a diver this equipment can add up real quick and cost a fortune. Kind of like a scooter, lots of fun but real expensive. The kind I want is anyway. 

I will continue on dive equipment next week. We will look at several items as we go. Remember life support has to work at depth.

© 0605-2005 G.McK.