The UW gear assemble..

I'm sure many of you older salts know about this, I know the only reason I know about it is because of my pops. But anyways, one of my roomates here in college told of his experience becoming an MSD, and that they had to assemble their entire kit at the bottom of the pool.
This is totally believable, however the next part, im not so sure about.

He described having to attach the first stage onto the tank while underwater, and then turn the air on. From what i've been told, that is one of the worst things to do to your dry air system.
When I restated his response, he told me yes, they had to do that.
He said when he asked the instructor, she said that in a real emergency you wouldn't care about getting water in your first stage. (I digress, you also aren't diving down to get your gear in a real emergency, but what do I know?)

If it was me, I would've said to the instructor, "Okay, let me use your regulator"


So my questions to you, the reader:
-Do you think he really had to do this?
-Is it even possible to do?
-It would totally destroy the first stage right?
-anything else you'd like to add?

PS- I have yet to dive with him, so we'll see how the rest of his education is

I am an "old salt" and I practice this all the time. I either throw everything in the deepend and "find it and assemble" or put it all down there (weighted) and do the same thing. I'm not into accidentally trashing gear, so I usually at least attach the reg to the tank, but always with air off.

I did that during DM course (wasn't a requirement). Buit the first stage was attached of course. It was just an exercise. Can anyone think of a scenario where you'd actually have to do this--and one where you would have to re-attach the first stage? You'd first go for your buddy's alt., or consider a CESA, etc. or your pony bottle? I suppose there is some possibility of a scenario.....

Its one of those ridiculous exercises intended to simulate stress and problem solving practice. I can't see any justification for it because it is just so ridiculous. If you threw my gear in, I think I'd tell you to go get it. And then I'd think about punching you in the face when you got back with it.

I don't think it will hurt the gear to do it. The little bit of water should just go through the first stage, but you may end up needed service afterwards. I've never done it with my gear because (1) its ridiculous - see above - and (2) gear is expensive and I don't see any reason to do that to it.

As for real situations where you might need to put a first stage on underwater, the only thing I can think of is if you had a reg fail on a deco bottle, or one of a dual tank setup and you need to switch the working reg over. But, a lot of things would have had to go wrong to get to the point where that is the best course of action.

My biggest water in the regulator concern isn't water in the first stage. Any water should blow through. Nor is it water in the second stage. It should also blow through. Also both can be easily cleaned (if contaniminated with salt or chlorinated water). But how about water into the spg? No place for it to go except sit there and corrode from the inside. Not even sure how I would go about drying the spg out.

Back to the subject; During my DM training we had to swap gear while buddy breathing. No particular point in the exercise EXCEPT it showed planning and control during task loading. As for assembling gear at the bottom: as long as the regulator was attached to the tank first, sounds kind of fun. Years ago I remember doing ditch at the bottom of the pool, surface, submerge, re-don. Made me more comfortable - but now there is heightened concern about forgetting to blow bubbles as you ascend.

The point of all of these exercises is to add something out of the ordinary to 'task load' to build comfort and confidence without simulating (and possibly creating) and emergency. In flying emergencies are practiced all the time with the best scenarios in a simulator. We don't have diving simulators (sorry eDive) so we can safely practice some situations (OOA, LOA, mask off, etc) but others (tangled in line, etc) aren't safe to simulate.

Comfort with removing my gear in water helped with a minor problem on my last dive. I set my tank slightly lower for my second dive and when we got out to our descent point I found the wing restricted my primary so it was uncomfortable to completely turn my head to the left. Next option was to use my alternate for the dive and leave my primary as the 'spare'. Wasn't too thrilled about that for a couple of reasons. Because I'm comfortable removing gear in water it was a simple matter to hand off my weight belt (using a crotch strap), remove the tank/wing, reposition the tank, and re-don. Took at most 1-2 minutes, and made for a more comfortable dive.