I guess I’ll start with short story about my first hydraulic test (to be exact – it was the second one, as first failed). It was more than a year ago, cold, lakes covered in thick ice. I had V2 with attached Suunto Gecko to it, all tied up with rope, huge axe, grill plate, some wood, sausages, adventurous mood and two friends with me :)

Test itself is quite obvious from the picture: you make a hole in ice, and descend your gear to the bottom (in that place we had ~ 49 meters) and while you wait: do the barbecue stuff. While we were doing that one fellow came to check if everything is ok. You got to admit – fire in a middle of the lake in the evening – not quite typical activity even in our savage latitudes. Keeping in mind that it was middle of the working week and parking lot is about 1 km away.

Next hydraulic challenge for my V2 was 59 meters with me accompanying but that’s a different story :)

That was the beginning. Method was reliable and easy to use, yet, very expensive, long lasting and limited as luckily we don’t have ice all year round. I’ll share with you what I do now.

I’m very grateful for the ones who already trusted me and purchased one of my V3’s. if you are thinking about getting one too you had to ask yourself: how can he be so sure that it’s watertight and it won’t malfunction during 2 year period? I made a short clip how it its checked for water and pressure tightness.

P.S. There is a disclaimer in a video and I’ll repeat once more: hydraulics and pneumatics is not a toy. Hardly noticeable details (damaged bolt, wrong type of hose, readily preset to HP gas regulator and many other) may yield very sad outcomes up to coffin. Please look after yourself and don’t play with it: I know the fact how 8 bar pressure killed a man, trust me, 20 – 100 bar is even more effective in that.