Re: PADI Propaganda- and the big bad cave divers in fl


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Posted by MHK on October 23, 2001 at 09:45:44:

In Reply to: PADI Propaganda- and the big bad cave divers in fl posted by maddiver on October 22, 2001 at 18:49:53:

I think two issues are getting confused. On the one hand I don't think anyone is disagreeing that Tim has the right to limit how high he pumps tanks on his boats. If he chooses to pump an AL 80 to 3000 or 3300 that is hin unilateral right and if someone doesn't like it, there are plenty of other boats for them to go on..

The other point that is being bantered about is the fact that PST 104's routinely get pumped to 3600 in cave country. In fact, if you handed in your doubles and only received a 2400 psi fill you would have gotten cheated and the shop would likely go out of business because they would be the only shop around filling to the rated pressure. Remember that cave diver's use the rule of 1/3's so therefore the difference between 2400 and 3600 is huge. To that end one may wonder why it is that this is an every day practice in cave country and a tank exploding is a rare occurence. The reason is simple and it's because the DOT has ridiculously low ratings that provide an enormous safety margin. Some would argue much too much of a margin. Ken Kurtis advanced a point in the other thread that talked about specs and he was dead wrong. It isn't the sepcs of the tank that precludes a tank from filling to 3600 [ PST 104's] it's just that the DOT setforth the regulations and that's the way it is.

Clearly Tim and any other shop owner/boat owner is well within their province to limit the amount of fill pressure to DOT standards, and in point of fact given that there really is no upside for them to break the rules, why would they????

Frankly, if you need more gas why not just use doubles???

Later


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