We only had about 8 people turn up for the meeting. General consensus was that we will do the next one at Mt. Storm in West Virginia so people can get in some practice. We don't want to turn into one of those groups that gets together every week and looks at pictures of fish, so I think MikeS is right on with his idea to meet at dive sites. That should discourage all the "fish picture" types...not that I hate them, but there are other clubs around here that do that type of thing and I want no part of it.
Anyway, this is as good a spot as any for an abbreviated meeting report. There were 8 of us and the topic was gear. Divernva and I did most of the yakking (we have big mouths) and started with BCs. We had a standard back inflate and a couple bp/wing setups (one singles and one doubles). We then moved on to regulators and looked at a standard OW setup and then at long hose setups. We finished off regs with setting up a doubles rig and talking about why things were the way they were. We talked about valves and manifolds somewhere in here... We showed how a stage/deco bottle is rigged, attached to a harness, and then deployed and talked about redundant air sources in general (pony bottles, spare airs, etc.).
After BCs and regs, we talked about lights, reels, spools, liftbags/SMBs, and other miscellany. We showed proper deployment and procedures for using each.
We had a few sets of fins and talked about each as related to foot pocket size, spring straps vs. standard attachment points, utility for various propulsion methods, etc.
We covered miscellany in here somewhere - slates, shears, cutting devices, etc.
We must have done some other junk because we didn't make it out of there until almost 10 pm...I can't remember what else we did, but we finished up with undergarments and drysuits.
We skipped masks and wetsuits because everybody pretty much knew what was up with those.
That's all I can remember...