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The message <.20000506013219.009c3730@ma*.bd*.co*.au*> from <bdi@bd*.co*.au*> contains these words: > Bungee wings exert drag when you're swimming. If the bungees are > loose enough not to restrict oral inflation at depth they are > not tight enough to do what OMS claims they do and are > therefore totally unecessary. WHen you do inflate them, > they constrict the bag before full bouyancy is achieved and > then blow off the OP valve. Because they're crinkled up they > trap gas and are hard to fully deflate - which can be a bitch > on deco. They piut the bouyancy beneath the tanks, rather > than around them. Not stable. If you finally get rid of the bungy, > you'll find that the bladder is too wide behind the neck and your > bouyancy is never right. The bungee wings are also implicated in > training deaths. Several years ago, Sept 96 , a recreational diver, just starting to venture into decompression, spent a long weekend in Scapa , with a couple of more experienced friends, one of them was using a nice new bungeed wing, it was impressive, lots of technical looking bits on it. The plan was made, all 3 in together, another boat was waiting with a group of university divers. The first 2 jumped, the 3rd had a minor hitch, so the pair went down to 6m to wait out of the chop, while the boat went round again, meanwhile the 2nd boat threw its divers in, newly qualified, by the look, thrashing around, one pair plummeted down the shot splitting the 2 already on the line, in the meantime somehow dislodging the suit d/f of the bungee winged diver, and knocking a mask loose. The viz was around 4m or so at the time. In the confusion, by the time the less experience diver had regained the line, the buddy was disappearing down - fast, in fact very fast, vague panic starting to set in, no idea why a reliable buddy should 'decide' to disappear, off the line, she followed, if you've ever tried to follow anyone falling, its almost impossible to catch up. It turned out that the only course of action had been to inflate the wing, until the d/f was sorted, unfortunately it had got a minor fault on the dump, the auto deflate bungees are very effective, and wing wouldn't hold any air, by this time, suit squeeze was very noticable, and fixing the d/f becoming harder due to restricted movement. The seabed near the Dresden is about 35m, so not overly deep, but deep enough to get in a whole heap of trouble. The landing wasn't too soft, the 2 were by now together and the suit d/f sorted. A few minutes to look around and calm down a bit, no wreck in sight so back up on a delayed. Meanwhile the 3rd diver had no idea where the first 2 had gone, one of which happened to be his new SO. No-one came to any harm that day, it ruined the dive, frightened the life out of everyone, the wing didn't cause the initial problem, a combination of bad planning/other divers and bad luck did, it happened to be at the beginnng of a dive, when no-one had any decompression requirements and all had plenty of gas, but I've often wondered what the outcome would have been if the wreck had been deeper or it had been the end of a dive...... Or maybe its better not to think about it.. Fiona -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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