FOR MOST DIVING PURPOSES, KISS (KEEP IT SIMPLE, ETC) IS THE BEST POLICY and the Green Force Arrow underwater light is a very simple bit of kit.
The manufacturer has enclosed a line of modern nickel metal hydride battery units in a long tube of marine-grade aluminium which has a lamphead with 4.5cm diameter reflector. This is made watertight by three O-rings in series, screwed into one end.
Two versions are available. More batteries, more voltage, so the 12V version is around twice the length of its 6V counterpart.
You remove the lamphead and plug in a charging socket, being careful that it is disconnected from its rather flimsy plastic plug while you do it. You can charge it from a 220V or 12V supply, and for the latter a car cigarette-lighter plug is supplied. Nickel metal hydride batteries can be topped up without inducing a memory, so I stuck it on charge between dives.
The charger of the 6V unit is not high-tech, so you need to turn it off once the batteries start to get warm, but the charger for the 12V unit does have a timer included.
Both ends of the battery-pack are similarly threaded and the plug at the other end is equipped with a one-way valve to allow venting of battery gases.
Rated to 500m, I chose to try the 6V version in shallower water and found that, although it was a little long at 34cm, it was convenient to handle, well-balanced, and produced a lot of light, although not quite in the Hartenberger or Kowalski category.
A fully charged 6V unit gave me a genuine 55 minutes of light from a 20W xenon bulb, which was bright enough to use during tropical daylight and did not annoy any of my fellow-divers by blinding them during night dives. The 12V unit is said to give a 65 minute burn-time from a 30W bulb.
To turn the lamp on, you simply screw down the lamphead. On one occasion I watched in horror as someone to whom I had lent the unit turned the lamphead seemingly endlessly in the wrong direction without effect, exposing the first O-ring.
I'm pleased to report that there were sufficient threads and O-rings to prevent it from flooding before I grabbed it back!
Why turn it off at all? A burn-time of 55 minutes was always going to be enough for the dive, and why risk blowing a bulb in some pointless attempt to save the batteries when they are easily topped up? So you might say that the unit I had for this review was tested to near-destruction!
Unlike some other European-made higher-powered lights, the Green Force Arrow 6 does not insist that you bring out your credit card at the airport check-in. In fact it weighs a mere 600g in hand-torch format.
The story does not stop there. Because of its modular construction, instead of screwing in the lamphead to the battery pack, you can screw in a matched plug with a 95cm umbilical lead connected to a hand unit instead.
This will take the lamphead screwed in, and in this way the unit becomes tekkie-acceptable in a moment. The choice is yours.
Of course, in 12V guise the battery-pack becomes a little unwieldy when using the unit as a hand torch, so using it as an umbilical makes sense. If you wanted to fix a couple of lamp units to a helmet, that would make sense too.
If you planning to use it as an umbilical lamp, the importer gives buyers the chance to rig the battery unit however they like but for safety's sake I suggest you spend the few extra pounds on the optional tank-clamp, rather than mess around with bungee cords and the like.
The Green Force Arrow 6 costs £145 with charger. With umbilical connections, it costs £48 extra. The Arrow 12 costs £270 (clamp £13 extra).

When I arrived recently at a foreign dive centre, the assembled British dive-guides and instructors expressed some disappointment at meeting me in the flesh. "You always look more like Sean Connery in Diver," they complained.
They were disappointed? Can you imagine how I felt?
I put this confusion down to the fact that, when I have a choice, I usually opt for a diving suit designed by Italians and, if I am being photographed for the magazine with any item of gear, I try to wear one. Italians cut their neoprene to enhance their looks. They choose panel-shapes and colours that make you appear to come out where you go in, and go in where you come out. The photographs of me in Diver continue to fool the public!
My wife confirms that these suits also accommodate the special needs of women. The material is cut to flatten areas that need flattening and support areas that need support. They glorify curves rather than trying to suppress them.
A British manufacturer new to the diving business sent me one of its initial efforts in wetsuit design to try. I looked in the mirror to see I had developed a curiously long body with short legs. I was also more concave-chested than ever. I looked like a wimp, and how I am and how I want to look are two different things. The manufacturer has since gone back to the drawing board.
Meanwhile, Cressi has sent me its Lontra 5mm one-piece suit to try. Beautifully cut and stitched in supple neoprene, the manufacturers have used blue, grey and black to accentuate or slim as necessary. Entry is via a zipper at the back, with a long tape so that you can operate it yourself, though I found this a bit of a nuisance when diving. It would start off tucked away under my BC but would always find its way out and float in front of my camera lens. So I cut it off and asked for help with dressing instead.
The zip is separated from your skin by two flaps of smooth-skin neoprene and the neck and throat enjoy the benefit of a smooth-skin seal. Cunningly concealed under zipped cuffs, there are flexible seals at both wrist and ankle, which are integrated with the main material of the suit. There is no chance of a seal coming unstitched and separating from the suit.
I met a German lady diver who had an almost identical Cressi suit but without these final finishing touches, so the seals were exposed to view. She chose to wear a small man's cut to suit her personal requirements, and perhaps it was a cheaper version not necessarily available in the UK, but it still looked very good on her.
I used the suit extensively in Indian Ocean water at around 24°C, diving for an hour at a time without getting cold. It was remarkably easy to get on and off, even when it was wet and freezing cold from a previous dive.
Available in either 5 or 6.5mm double-lined neoprene, if it is not warm enough for you there is also an over-jacket with attached hood (£75) or just a hood (£15) to match the one-piece suit.
After more than 40 dives, the Lontra looked as good as new. I anticipate using it a lot more before I return it. Don't be fooled, however - I'm still a gangly wimp on the inside.

The Cressi Lontra comes in a wide range of off-the-peg sizes and costs £150 for the one-piece suit.
Cressi-sub 01484 310130

Mares is known for premium products at premium prices but the Mares Vector Chrome is more attainable than some of its offerings. It is the company's entry-level BC but has many of the features that are taken for granted in its more expensive siblings.
There are no stainless steel D-rings but the two zipped pockets are useful. It has a hard backpack but just a loop of webbing suffices as a carrying-handle. Other fittings are of top quality.
There are three dump-valves. One is at the right shoulder and is operated by a pull-cord neatly threaded through the front shoulder facing. Another is located at the top of the corrugated hose that is connected to the direct-feed mechanism and operated by pulling down on it.
The third is positioned at the lower back, useful for duck-diving or releasing water once the dive is over. I found that air was always released easily and I never had to squirm about.
This was despite the fact that I used the minimum amount of weight possible and had to get rid of the last bit of air in the BC once there was little air left in the tank (the air in a full tank weighs more than 2kg) if I wanted to stay at between 5 and 3m at the end of a dive.
The special feature of this single-bag-design BC is the extremely adjustable strap system.
This can be set to give you a cummerbund of exactly the right length, shoulder straps that fit you precisely without being done-up so that the BC pinches under the arms, and two sternum straps that are adjustable for height as well as for width.
Set it up right and Mares promises that the BC will fit you perfectly. Of course, this means doing up three cross-chest straps with pinch-clips, something that can be a little fiddly when kitting up on a rolling boat. In fact I often "lost" the pull-cord for the right shoulder dump in the clutter of straps.
Despite all the possibilities of a perfect fit, the BC did tend to ride up a little during the dive, though nothing in comparison to some ill-fitting designs.
Aimed at the leisure diver who will certainly be using only one tank, and probably an aluminium one at that, the Vector Chrome did not provide an immense amount of surface buoyancy, but I found my head was always well clear of the water. There was around 15kg of lift with size M.
This is where someone will inevitably ask: "Will it lift a diver with a flooded drysuit?"
Well, I used it only with a flooded wetsuit, but apart from the significance of the fact that I assume a drysuit diver will not enjoy the sensation of cold water entering a suit, water down below is perfectly neutral when it comes to buoyancy, whether it is inside a wetsuit or a drysuit.
I think what those people really mean to ask is: "Will it lift a diver with a flooded drysuit who wears so much lead that he normally needs to use the drysuit and his BC for buoyancy control?"
In this case the answer is likely to be: "No!"
Some divers I see entering the water wear so much weight that I have started to believe this is just another form of Darwinism. I implore them to learn how to be neutrally buoyant rather than to expect to leave the surface like a dropped shot as soon as they let a little air out of the suit. As a rule, you should not need more lift in the BC than there is weight on your belt.
The Mares Vector Chrome is a good product, if rather dull to describe. It does its job in a very unexciting way, and that will appeal to many people - especially those blessed with a less-than-conventional shape.

It is available in sizes S to XL and costs around £265.

IF YOU HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED THE JOYS OF HAULING A 25KG SHOT UP FROM 30M AFTER A DIVE, you won't need convincing that a better way of doing this would be a good idea. Apart from the obvious saving of sweat, the less hard labour you need to do after taking on a load of nitrogen the better, write guest testers George Crowe and Steve Graham.
Hardboats are usually equipped with a winch to do this job, but that is not a practical solution in a RIB. Imagine then, the scepticism which greeted the unwrapping of the Easylift, which claimed to take all the toil and sweat out of the job by harnessing the power of the boat engine.
The Easylift is a small device with a 6mm stainless-steel body and a Harken cleat with an alloy body and plastic base. The instructions are written with hoisting anchors in mind, not shotlines, so a bit of head-scratching was needed before it became clear what to do.
After capturing the buoy, you have to do a bit of fiddling with knots and string, but after that, all that is required is to take a turn round something strong on the boat, and drive away.
As if by magic, the shot is raised from the seabed and ends up nestling neatly beneath the buoy! Slightly to the surprise of the testers from Ariel BSAC (a sceptical bunch at the best of times), it works perfectly!
You might not be too popular if you used this technique on a crowded dive site, because the shot travels quite a long way as it is being hauled up, so you need several hundred metres of clear water to raise it from any depth.
A karabiner on the shotline buoy would save a lot of knot-tying and minimise the risk of dropping the whole thing over the side.
That said, this is a very useful little device which can save a lot of hard work. Every RIB should have one!

The Easylift costs £55..
W PC Construction 01244 851875