Around this time might be a good place to flag up a few points.
1. To be honest, there isn't a lot of difference between the device in question and many others also for sale. Many other metal tube mods that could take two batteries and have no electronic controls would fail the balloon air pressure test. For example my SB does. Some will vent at high pressure, some won't. Some will take the pressure without major issues, some will disintegrate. Some will fire the bottom end off, some will fire the top end off. There's no real way of telling without extensive testing or some kind of history of incidents. We know of four or five different brands that have exploded or gone super-rocket, so it may be a little unfair to pick on a new model that is to all intents and purposes the same as many already on sale. We know that existing models explode so why the big deal about yet another? They all need fixing.
2. Drilling a couple of holes somewhere isn't going to fix it. Imagine your sister is holding a small, low-power grenade in her hand, in front of her face. Are you going to be happy about it if there are a couple of small holes? No - because it will still explode. This is the stage we were at a couple of years back: thinking some small holes would be OK. We've moved on a long way since then. Now we know that the gas vents need to be a whole lot bigger or all they do is give you three seconds to drop the device.
3. Holes at the bottom are probably better than nothing but they don't fix the main problem: the batteries swell and block the tube, then pressure builds up at the top end of the tube. It needs gas vents at the top - substantial ones. Remember, the two explosions this year both blew the top end off into the user's face, and there is a reason for that.
4. ECF cannot possibly win on this issue. There was hysterical, vitriolic criticism of us for even daring to suggest that APVs need gas vents. I think many people have forgotten that. The community, the vendors, and the vendor's fanboys really laid into us for ramping up the EMSS when it was obvious it needed better provisions and more promotion. The attacks on us were vicious and persistent, with threads running for dozens of pages accusing us of who knows what. And now? Now, we have a situation which appears to be the direct opposite - people are screaming for us to remove a vendor and/or not doing enough.
We don't make rules about products and we don't do knee-jerk reactions. The trade needs to sort itself out and the community need to decide exactly what they want. One day they are bitterly attacking us for suggesting safety features, the next they are saying we haven't gone far enough.
Luckily this will soon be out of our hands. Someone else can take all the criticism for doing something/nothing, then next week take the flak for doing the opposite.
1. To be honest, there isn't a lot of difference between the device in question and many others also for sale. Many other metal tube mods that could take two batteries and have no electronic controls would fail the balloon air pressure test. For example my SB does. Some will vent at high pressure, some won't. Some will take the pressure without major issues, some will disintegrate. Some will fire the bottom end off, some will fire the top end off. There's no real way of telling without extensive testing or some kind of history of incidents. We know of four or five different brands that have exploded or gone super-rocket, so it may be a little unfair to pick on a new model that is to all intents and purposes the same as many already on sale. We know that existing models explode so why the big deal about yet another? They all need fixing.
2. Drilling a couple of holes somewhere isn't going to fix it. Imagine your sister is holding a small, low-power grenade in her hand, in front of her face. Are you going to be happy about it if there are a couple of small holes? No - because it will still explode. This is the stage we were at a couple of years back: thinking some small holes would be OK. We've moved on a long way since then. Now we know that the gas vents need to be a whole lot bigger or all they do is give you three seconds to drop the device.
3. Holes at the bottom are probably better than nothing but they don't fix the main problem: the batteries swell and block the tube, then pressure builds up at the top end of the tube. It needs gas vents at the top - substantial ones. Remember, the two explosions this year both blew the top end off into the user's face, and there is a reason for that.
4. ECF cannot possibly win on this issue. There was hysterical, vitriolic criticism of us for even daring to suggest that APVs need gas vents. I think many people have forgotten that. The community, the vendors, and the vendor's fanboys really laid into us for ramping up the EMSS when it was obvious it needed better provisions and more promotion. The attacks on us were vicious and persistent, with threads running for dozens of pages accusing us of who knows what. And now? Now, we have a situation which appears to be the direct opposite - people are screaming for us to remove a vendor and/or not doing enough.
We don't make rules about products and we don't do knee-jerk reactions. The trade needs to sort itself out and the community need to decide exactly what they want. One day they are bitterly attacking us for suggesting safety features, the next they are saying we haven't gone far enough.
Luckily this will soon be out of our hands. Someone else can take all the criticism for doing something/nothing, then next week take the flak for doing the opposite.
