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Bottom line is that when you see bungee wings - call the dive or get rid
of the stroke wearing them. 

Edward Watson wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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