Wow, I guess I really struck a chord here, didn't mean for it to turn into such a debate, but I guess the discourse of information is better for the people.
On a side note, my diving instructor was kind enough to give me another hydro and VIP after he heard happen. He is in aggreance with me that I was scammed a little, if someone where local they may know of Marine Systems, which like I said earlier has NAVY contracts for their work. So for a little run down hole in the wall dive shop to call their work bad is pretty incredulous.
One thing that did occur to me though, is people seem to potray themselves as patron saints about how all these bottles should be condemned and taken out of circulation because of the safety hazardand risk to the fill operators. But in reality in comes down to money, if these tanks cost say 1000$ dollar each, I can say with some confidence that most of the safety mongers would be singing a different tune. And it would probably go something like this
"bHWAH you want me to replace this cylinder that has never failed me and passed every test for a new one that costs 1000$, when the one I have is suppose to last 40 years, you have lost your damn mind"
Obviously because of how cheap they relativley are, this is not the case, so the ease to replace them is a lot greater then the hypothetical situation I described, my point being, people who are on the other side of the fence are right in what they are saying, but shouldn't use the high-horse pedestal to preach the sermon from. Because like I said, its money, not safety driving this.
Something else that occured to me is, this could also be conceived as a way for scuba shops to essentially make more money. If a product has a 40 year shelf life, that doesn't bode well for profits, but if you place limits and arbituary regulations on it " We won't fill tanks older then 10 years" Well then you just created a condition for people to possibly have to buy from you every 10 years rather then 40.
In conclusion, I am a pilot, well working my way up right now, I am 24, not flying for the big carriers yet. But something that comes to mind is, I can't remember precisley what flight it was, I believe it was PanAm, where the front fuesalage completley seperated from the rest of the plane (a Boeing 747) for no apparent reason. Speculation flew, like terrorism, fire on board, etc. But what they found was it was caused by the copper wiring that had been used on all planes up to that point. It was found that this copper wiring had a very very very slight propensity to spontaneously combust when certain conditions where met (a was the case of the PanAm). This copper wiring had been used on pretty much every plane produced up to that point and the airline manufactures where left with a decision to make. Obviously all planes manufactured after this point would have a "new and improved" wiring. But what to do with all planes still in service (which today in the US is still pretty considerable) It was determined that the cost of replacement would go into the billions and it would trickle down to the consumers in some form or another to about an extra 200$ for round trip tickets. Suddenley all the people clamouring for safety shut up. So, like I said, it comes down to money, not people caring about other peoples safety.
Btw, an interesting fact about that, the presidents 747 fleet all had their wiring replaced to the sum of about a million dollars of our money
...so maybe some peoples lives are worth more then others
