I find Joe B. to be a little expensive for me. He charges >$200 for a fill station ($239 I think?) with the skinny hose. I bought my fill-station from e-bay for $75. It came assembled with everything, even the Foster female quick-connect fitting and the hose is rated for 5,000psi.
Yes it has the fat 2ft long hose and a smaller gauge, but for the $150 I save from not buying Mr. Brancato's setup, I can fill my 80cf Scuba 30X ($5/fill at local scuba shop) and still be in the "green" for a very long time. 30 scuba tanks is a lot! It translates to 20,000 shots for me!
I 'm only on my 3d scuba/fill (just 2 days ago) after 4.5 months of shooting my PCP and I shoot it about every other day. I get plenty of fills out of 1 Scuba even with that extra air I lose that's stored in the hose. At this rate it will take about 5yrs to start getting in the "red" because I did not buy the more expensive fill-station. It 'll probably be sooner than that because I just bought a 2nd PCP, but I 'm planning on getting a 2nd tank for backup anyway, probably a 4500psi one.
If you have a smaller tank like 44 or 30cf, it would probably not make sense to buy the cheaper "paintball-like" fill station with the larger hose, but with an 80-88cf scuba you can go a long time.
You can also request that the Scuba shop guy fills it to 3100-3200psi. The guy says don't worry I usually fill them up to 3,300psi so you can get a lot of fills! I asked is it safe? He said sure, he 's been doing it for years for paintball and airgunners. I said go for it. The tank was a little warm for about 30-60min. but he said that was normal. That was my first scuba tank. The 2nd time around, it was a different guy at the shop and I forgot to say anything until after he was done re-filling it. He only filled it to 3K psi and I got a couple less gun fills but it was still pretty good. So if you can go a little over 3K psi, that compensates for the air you are losing from the wider hose when you bleed it.
