What you have not told us is what is the condition of the activator
bobbins in the vests. How old are they? Where were they stored before
using them? If you are not sure, I suggest getting some new activators,
and retesting. Then tell us what you find.

Sherwin D.

Parallax wrote:

Occassionally I have tested our autoinflate SOSpenders and have found
them to be unreliable. In about 30% of the time, I have had to
manually activate them. Anybody else have experience with this?