Quote:
Originally Posted by valhalla360
… you can add a manual inflation nozzle. If it's just sitting on top of the water, normal air works just fine. Even partially deflated on the surface, it's going to be a bigger target.
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That is the answer to keep it extremely simple:
The mylar party balloons have a very effective foil valve inside after the inlet. You need a 10 cm straw or piece of PE tube to do it with your lung and mouth. The tube can be sealed with the balloon inlet with a strong rubber band or whipping twine. This is tested in practice:
In the figure just
1. leave the quick connect away, that is the mouth piece.
2. cut the inner part of the filling tube, so that it does only enter the start but does not go through the foil valve. It will only connect to the inlet of the foil valve. Then the valve continues to do its
work and let air in but not out.
Ballon, twine and tube are extremely small and lightweight. Perhaps 10g and 5$
The only drawback: you need to be conscious and have enough air left to fill the balloon.
Certainly it is a good chance to significantly increase visibility with minimum additional
equipment, which can be fitted inside your personal life jacket.
Now we just need the bright colour ballons, which come from one company in US but a distributed globally, large size round shape is 28 inch = 70 cm diameter.
I will construct one for testing asap. Perhaps I have one small 16 inch balloon left from my
research. It had a pig printing from a child
movie of the 1990s and I got it free of charge as leftover from the anagram company
https://anagramballoons.com. Large ballon size and bright orange or yellow would be better!
PE hydraulic tube 8mm OD at hand.
I am keen to see others doing a practical test! Send a
photo please.
Jo