Roy_W
Contributor
Hi All,
Had a little surprise this week.. We were three divers and I did my pre-dive check, on the surface, with buddy number one. Gas Ok - 220 Bars, Regulators Ok - Three deep breaths on Primary and Octopus, BCD Inflation Ok, the usual stuff.
We headed of into the water, reached our descent point and proceeded with our dive plan, heading of to our deepest point at 20m.
At the 17m mark I felt an unusual response from my regulator, I didn't understand what it was initially, it felt as though though something blocked the regulator after 1 second. After trying to take a second breath, same result. At this point I signaled to my buddy that I was OOA. Everything went calmly, he passed me his Octopus and we made a controlled ascent. There was no need to make a safety stop but at 8 m we slowed the ascent down, we had plenty of gas and everyone was together and the situation was calm..
Back on the surface, I inflated my Stab manually. And then I tried my Regulator again, everything was working fine....strange....both primary and secondary...
We returned to shore and verified everything, turned out that my bottle had not been fully opened. It had been opened enough to make gauges and regulators work on the surface but not enough that it could supply at depth...
I have no idea what happened that day, usually I fully open the valve and then do a half turn back.. Which is our standard procedure. Why it was only open at 10% or so I will never know.
Later I spoke to our instructors who mentioned that we should do a secondary test around the 3 - 5m mark, whereby you take a few breaths and carefully watch the SPG, if the needle wobbles even a little bit it could be sign of a non-fully open bottle..
Do any of you have any other techniques that could possibly help avoid this kind of situation.
( Went diving yesterday and to no-ones surprise I made a big point of controlling that the valve was fully open , we also did some tests whereby we progressively opened the valve and studied the SPGs reaction when breathing from the primary, it really doesn't take more that a quarter of a turn of the valve for the needle on the SPG to remain static and fool you into believing that all is OK, at least on the surface.)...
Had a little surprise this week.. We were three divers and I did my pre-dive check, on the surface, with buddy number one. Gas Ok - 220 Bars, Regulators Ok - Three deep breaths on Primary and Octopus, BCD Inflation Ok, the usual stuff.
We headed of into the water, reached our descent point and proceeded with our dive plan, heading of to our deepest point at 20m.
At the 17m mark I felt an unusual response from my regulator, I didn't understand what it was initially, it felt as though though something blocked the regulator after 1 second. After trying to take a second breath, same result. At this point I signaled to my buddy that I was OOA. Everything went calmly, he passed me his Octopus and we made a controlled ascent. There was no need to make a safety stop but at 8 m we slowed the ascent down, we had plenty of gas and everyone was together and the situation was calm..
Back on the surface, I inflated my Stab manually. And then I tried my Regulator again, everything was working fine....strange....both primary and secondary...
We returned to shore and verified everything, turned out that my bottle had not been fully opened. It had been opened enough to make gauges and regulators work on the surface but not enough that it could supply at depth...
I have no idea what happened that day, usually I fully open the valve and then do a half turn back.. Which is our standard procedure. Why it was only open at 10% or so I will never know.
Later I spoke to our instructors who mentioned that we should do a secondary test around the 3 - 5m mark, whereby you take a few breaths and carefully watch the SPG, if the needle wobbles even a little bit it could be sign of a non-fully open bottle..
Do any of you have any other techniques that could possibly help avoid this kind of situation.
( Went diving yesterday and to no-ones surprise I made a big point of controlling that the valve was fully open , we also did some tests whereby we progressively opened the valve and studied the SPGs reaction when breathing from the primary, it really doesn't take more that a quarter of a turn of the valve for the needle on the SPG to remain static and fool you into believing that all is OK, at least on the surface.)...