elan
Contributor
One of the predive check items that I was taught in my technical course was to inflate the wing until it the valves pop and then push down on the inflated wing with full force to make sure it holds the gas. And we were doing it with Trimix A bit more expensive than air. I remember someone made a comment about how expensive it is to do that check blabla The instructor made some jokes about it at the time. During one of the following training dives my buddy got his wing "malfunctioned" - he "lost" (the instructor unscrewed it) the dump valve. And were watching us struggling with maintaining buoyancy - it was a total catastrophe on the bottom of 20ft lake.I see far too many divers "sip" their air during their pre-dive checks, afraid of using up too much of their precious air before diving. Any diver diving with me, I make sure they take a couple of deep full breaths off their reg while watching gauges.
Guess what, no one was asking any questions anymore and trying to save "precious" gas. Every dive onward I check all the valves and do the pop-check , how I call it, trimix or not.