I think that if I owned a dive boat that supplied tanks, I would use vindicator knobs to mitigate liability....and write it off my taxes.....and try to get a better insurance rate.....oh, and advertise how much we care about our clients... oh, oh....and put a smoochy Teddy Bear in the ad.
Do dive shops let you put vindicator valves on rental tanks?
- Thread starter M DeM
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I'm hugely in favor of them. This is one of the rare circumstances where a piece of gear is all benefit with no drawback. even the cost of vindicator handwleels is pretty cheap.
One of the biggies:
We've all either seen threads about or (more likely) personally experienced a DM closing a previously opened valve as you walk down the boat before a giant stride. These will probably completely eliminate that as the DM has no need to turn each knob. He can see at a glance if your tank is on.
That said, I doubt most boat ops would let you install a new handwheel. I'm just glad they let us install working o-rings.. which can be hard to come by in the Caribbean unless you install the things yourself.
One of the biggies:
We've all either seen threads about or (more likely) personally experienced a DM closing a previously opened valve as you walk down the boat before a giant stride. These will probably completely eliminate that as the DM has no need to turn each knob. He can see at a glance if your tank is on.
That said, I doubt most boat ops would let you install a new handwheel. I'm just glad they let us install working o-rings.. which can be hard to come by in the Caribbean unless you install the things yourself.
I doubt they will let you do it. I wouldn't let anyone screw with any of the gear, and if you required vindicator knobs on your tanks to dive safely, I probably would deny you service.
Vindicator knobs are another one of those things that shouldn't really even have a place in the market, and they're making up for an issue that should have been drilled out of a student from day one. I don't have them on any of my tanks, and I've never had an issue. If you're a sidemount or tec diver and you need to rely on vindicator knobs, you shouldn't be doing that kind of diving. The final step of any valve drill is a flow check. If you're skipping the most important step, where you actually check your gear after mucking with it, you're already doing it wrong, and a vindicator knob isn't going to prevent that.
Vindicator knobs are another one of those things that shouldn't really even have a place in the market, and they're making up for an issue that should have been drilled out of a student from day one. I don't have them on any of my tanks, and I've never had an issue. If you're a sidemount or tec diver and you need to rely on vindicator knobs, you shouldn't be doing that kind of diving. The final step of any valve drill is a flow check. If you're skipping the most important step, where you actually check your gear after mucking with it, you're already doing it wrong, and a vindicator knob isn't going to prevent that.
kafkaland
Contributor
LOL - that didn't stop a captain from turning my air off right before splashing. I'm diving sidemount and have the vindicator hand wheels on my tanks. Both were open when I got to the platform, and then the captain on his final check turned one of them off! Fortunately I caught it and turned it back on before jumping. It wouldn't have been a big deal anyway if one of them had been off - that's the beauty of sidemount. But still concerning.
We liked the idea of the Vindicator but in reality actually didn’t care for them. Took them off all the tanks. Except the pony tank. Here I like it not for the visual clue but because it is large and I usually dive with the valve off.
Diving back-mount doubles, I can not fathom the pie-in-the-sky benifit of color-cued knobs that I can't see under water. I don't care what color is showing as I can't see them. I just know I need to be able to manipulate them in the appropriate direction depending on the situation.
They are really comfortable to turn on and off. I like the ergonomic feel of the handle. Color is a bonus about which I care less.
I don't have strong feelings about these one way or the other. I basically agree with Johnny that they are a gear solution to a skills problem, and that if you are diving at the tech level you shouldn't be relying on things like color coded hoses or these knobs. You should commit to always knowing if your valves are open or closed, etc..
But I also agree that one advantage of them is that the crew of a dive boat can ensure that a diver's gas is turned on at a glance without touching the knob. It certainly could be an advantage for large recreational charters with new divers, and it would also work for divers in back mounted doubles.
Is that too nanny state, especially for tech divers? Well, many excellent dive boats ask me what my PO2 is before I splash, and I don't have a problem with that. And as the recent tragedy in Hawaii demonstrated, you can be a technical rebreather diver, and still forget to open a valve...
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