WOODMAN
Contributor
In the midst of all this nonsense about what color to use, when (or if) to deploy it, how to inflate it, yada, yada..., There is one topic I have not seen addressed here, and that is testing the durn thing periodically. I have seen more than one diver who has a SMB clipped to their vest which has been hanging there for years and probably never used. Those things do age and get brittle, you know, and I once unrolled an old one of mine to test it, and found it had split right along the seam and was useless. The better ones are more reliable, but until you open them up and put air in them you just don't know how they are going to work when you need them. Attempting to deploy one of these on the surface is a particularly unfortunate time to find out that yours has split, don't you think? Just my humble opinion... Woody