BCD
BCD stands for buoyancy control device, this is one of the main things you need when you are going diving . Basically it is a piece of equipment containing a bladder and the bladder you can fill with air to keep you neutrally buoyant under the water or positively buoyant on the surface. You control this badder when you attache it to the BCD inflator hose. You can inflate or deflate the bladder depending what you want. It is very easy to do, push one button and it fills with air until you let go off the button. If you carry on filling the bladder with air there are normally 3 escape valves on your new bcd because if these weren’t there and you kept filling your BCD … your BCD would explode… BOOM… and would have no further use.
These 3 escape valves will release some of the air, not all of it because then you would sink like rock. To get rid of the air, there is a button right next to the inflation button. Normally these buttons are blue and red – Blue is to fill and red is to deflate
History
Bcds that are typically seen today have been around since 1971 and were produced by scubapro.
In early 1961 BCD’s were inflated by mouth instead of the inflation hose, but later versions had their own air inflation cylinder. Some of them had carbon dioxide inflation cartridges this idea was ditched because the diver could not breath from the BCD.
In 1972 a company called water gill made a at pac wing , the first wing styled BCD and this cam with padded shoulder straps and your weight pockets. Scubapro made a more stable BCD jacket in 1997 and these are the jackets we use today. A 360° design for air flow to go all around the jacket evenly.
The recent BCD’s all include weight pouches to adjust your weights instead of using a weight belt.
[product_category category=”bcds”]