Been a while since I had a bad experience at a fill station

[deathstalker]

I hand over my Flatline for my first fill of the day. As he's filling the tank, I'm inspecting my paint to make sure there are no breaks. The kid comes back and says, "Can you tell me what your gauge says? I'm having a problem filling it."

I take a glance at the HP gauge to see that it's the same as when I gave it to him. Then my eyes are drawn to the output gauge and the needle is pointing straight down. If you aren't familiar with the Flatline gauges, the numbers take up about 105 degrees at the very top of the gauge. Obviously, what I'm seeing is wrong, as it should have read 0 (about the 11 o'clock position).

He takes the tank back to the fill station and tries again, while I move over so I can keep an eye on what's going on. As I come over, he says that he's having problems with the fill nipple and can't fill it. As the words, "Oh no" are going through my mind, another kid there tries and as soon as he connects the line, the kid who originally tried to fill it starts calling himself an idiot. I look at him and immediately realize what he did: He tried to fill the tank through the output.

Yay, now I have a blown output gauge. I was hoping I could be an exception to all the people who have had bad experiences with the gauges on their Flatline, but I guess I won't have my chance. Any idea if this kid could have caused any damage? Everything seemed OK afterwards.

[ubooze]

What field did this happen at?

[Sean "Chuffy" Combs]

erm.

I take it you have a quick disconnect on the output part of your tank.

If that's the case, you should have told him which port was right.

[deathstalker]

It happened at Tri-City. I'll add that I was never chrono'd by a ref today, either.

I don't normally keep a QD on the ouput (just on the fill nipple) and in the four years I've been using HPA, this has never happened. I guess I took it for granted. Just wondering if any damage might have resulted.

[nerobro]

The reg is just fine. You it shoudln't be harmed at all. All you need to do is replace that guage. :-) This weekend my team captian had a blown guage on his armageddon. It's all "normal" stuff.

However, in the future, leave a line hooked up to the output port. Air fill monkeys tend to be braindead. It's a safety feature, they take the hit instead of you when the fill rig goes ;-) (hoses blowing, burst disks going, guages unwinding, etc...)

I've had some fun experiences myself. Including places that didn't comprehend that a bottle needed to be turned on to be filled... *points at his PMI minireg 1 and PVI Maxflow* I got charged full price for those fills too...