I realise that there are many divers who want a BC that will withstand being worn by a marine who might be dropped out of a helicopter at speed, fully equipped to scuba.
    They want their BCs to be as bullet-proof as they think they are themselves. That's not me. I'm not a fan of military-style BCs that are heavy or uncomfortable to wear. I learned to dive at the dilettante school of diving.
    I realise that there are those who would not enter the water without that 400ml auxiliary air cylinder. Not me. I'd rather manage my air by watching my pressure gauge, and dispense with the extra weight in my dive bag, and the worry of an uninspected cylinder filled to 230 bar strapped next to my personal parts.
    I realise that there are those who like to wear so much weight that they need belt and braces to support it all. To them, a BC with integrated weights would merely equal an aqua-lung set that was far too heavy to heave onto their backs. Not me. I'd rather dive with the minimum amount of lead integrated with my BC and be free of the discomfort of it banging about on my hips.
    AP Valves started making BCs for the club market back when engineering values meant making something that lasted forever (Buddy BCs do); when style was something only effete foreigners had; when use of auxiliary air cylinders was enshrined in club training; and when people walked about on wrecks and had no thoughts of neutral buoyancy.
    Times change, however. The new Buddy Ranger has an integrated-weight system.
AP Valves is based in Cornwall, and many of its staff regularly go diving. This provides another reason why the company's BCs are ideal for UK waters, where presumably you do not have to transport your gear very far, and lots of your friends will stand on it while getting themselves sorted out in the boat.
    So even though the Ranger is said to be aimed at divers on the move, it is still built with the same attributes as those little brick buildings at the bottom of some gardens. Buddy BCs are, above all, tough, but they are not light.
    AP Valves in no way abandoned its ideals when designing a BC "with the travelling diver in mind." You'll need a bigger baggage allowance than 20kg if you're going anywhere by plane and want to take a change of clothes, because the Ranger (full spec) weighs more than 5.2kg.
    It is built with the same heavyweight material that has served Buddy BCs, the Royal Mail and potato-farmers so well. It has the same independent inner bladder, the same provision for the 400ml auxiliary cylinder, the same hard backpack, and the same right-handed shoulder-dump as every other Buddy BC.
    It has the unique Buddy shoulder buckles, and fastens with a horizontal strap at the waist and another at the sternum. An Auto-Air breathing device is optional as a direct-feed inflator. In some ways it is reminiscent of the Buddy Pioneer, with the same colour scheme and high-visibility reflective stripes, and similar self-draining pockets.
    There is enough buoyancy to support a twinset and you can use the superbly convenient and efficient Buddy twinning blocks and bands for this.
    The big difference comes with the weight-pockets. There are four of them, and AP Valves tells me they will work with packets of shot as well as traditional block-weights.
    Two are high up at the back, closed with three layers of velcro-covered material to form a parcel over the weights, which are in turn held by a velcro-covered strap, not unlike Buddy hose-retainers. These trim weights are not ditchable, but prove very useful when used with twin aluminium cylinders.
    The main weight-pockets sit either side at the front and take the form of weight-wallets, where the weights are retained again by velcro straps. There are two sets of straps in each, so if you are using the Ranger with just a few bits of lead, you have the option of positioning them either towards the front or back.
    The weight-wallets are kept closed by generous helpings of velcro and dragged from where they are stowed by large toggles. The flap of each pocket in which they are stowed is closed by a large slab of velcro. How effective is all this velcro at keeping your weights where they need to be?
    AP Valves unashamedly aims its products at both the military and the UK club diver. Clubs are rife with dogma, but the idea that you must be able to drop your weights comes from the days before BCs and the concept of neutral buoyancy for divers, and you still cannot sell a BC in Britain with integrated weights that are not easily dropped.
    However, I would say that one of the two traumas a diver is most likely to encounter is either an out-of-air situation or an inadvertently dropped weightbelt.
    As the Coastguard will no doubt tell you, many accidents happen because divers fail to control their buoyancy during ascent. We hear all the time from divers who dropped their weights by accident, but few accidents happen because the diver needed to drop weights.
    I would far rather dive with a BC with integrated weights that could not be dropped by accident, than a BC with an integrated-weight system in which I had no confidence that it would hold the weights securely.
    George Buxton, a good friend, had never dived with a BC with integrated weights before. In his thick wetsuit, he was instantly converted by the comfort of the integrated-weight Ranger. It is just so much better than stringing weights around your waist.
    We were limited by the weights to hand. We had 6kg in the front pockets and 4kg as trim-weights. They certainly never fell out during a week's hard diving, and we endured long swims from the shore to the dive site twice a day, too.
    It is important to be able to routinely pull out your weights and hand them up when diving from a RIB or inflatable, and we could not fault the Ranger in this department. It is equally important to restow the weight-packets properly before diving again, and the Ranger avoids any risk of the user putting them in the wrong slots.

    You could not claim that the Buddy Ranger is stylish, but it is very functional. It come in sizes S, M, L and XL and costs from £310, or £397 complete with auxiliary cylinder and Auto-Air in black TD version (with extra D-rings).
AP Valves 01326 561040, www.apvalves.com

Weight-wallets are kept closed by velcro and dragged from their pockets by large toggles


two weight pockets are high up at the back, the two main ones either side at the front


the pockets will take either block weights or shot

I hate things labelled "Pro". It inevitably means that they are intended for amateurs. That was my only real criticism of the classic Aquion Pro drysuit last time I encountered one.
    Aquion drysuits were never that exciting, unless you call coming back from a dive as dry as you were before you went in exciting. I would call that "satisfying".
    Made in Rotherham, Aquion suits were more a product of northern good sense and Yorkshire values than any startlingly innovative thinking.
    The company was at odds with this magazine as to how best to promote the brand but, keeping dry being the primary concern of drysuit-buyers, its suits certainly seemed popular enough.
    I witnessed Aquion's CEO being awarded a Queen's Award to Industry by the Lord-Lieutenant of the County. Soon afterwards, the company went under.
    There was a mad rush among certain parts of the British diving industry to get their hands on the brand's assets, resulting in several different operations claiming that they could supply the "original" Aquion suit. In fact, none of them could.
    One company actually bought up the Aquion badges and started fixing them to another membrane drysuit it made. Another claimed it had the staff and therefore the expertise to make the original Aquion suit. Well, if you thought you bought an Aquion suit during the last couple of years, bad luck, because from now on you're going to have to put up with people appearing at dive sites again wearing the real thing.
    Airsub International now has the original staff, the patterns, the material and the brand. And it has gone back into business making the old suit.
    I tried one, and found it agreeably like the example I last tried in 1998. It's a membrane-style suit made from what is now thought of as a conventional trilaminate of butyl rubber sandwiched between two layers of nylon.
    There is a cross-shoulder zip, latex seals at wrists and neck, fixed rubber wellies and sleeves cut raglan-style to allow lots of movement. It's the epitome of a traditional membrane drysuit design.
    In 1998 I visited a diving equipment manufacturer in Italy which wanted to take me out to demonstrate its new full-face mask. We went to Nole to dive.
    The Italians, not unnaturally, wanted me to use only their branded equipment for the dives. It was October, however, and knowing the Mediterranean, I opted to wear the Aquion Pro drysuit, about which I was writing at the time. The macho Italians laughed at me Ð what a wimp! I certainly looked less glamorous than my companions in their sexy wetsuits as we set off.
    However, during the ride back to shore in the open boat, through an obviously unexpected storm of horizontal hailstones, they all looked rather pale and wan. I was warm and dry and had a big and somewhat triumphant smile on my face!
    I tried the latest offering from the new owners of the Aquion brand and found it identical to that old suit except that, as with many other drysuits today, modern heat-activated tape is used instead of the old tape/glue/tape method. I stayed dry and warm during the total of 12 hours I spent under water with it, and you can't ask for more than that.
    The old-fashioned Apex auto-dump on the shoulder might have been more convenient had it been replaced by a later, low-profile model and, as usual, I got the internal braces in a twist because they were black and hard to see in the inky shadows of the suit's interior (how often do I criticise drysuit braces in this way?). I had no other complaints.
    Aquion suits might have had a reputation in the past for a less than generous cut, but if you are not prone to gulp down ten pints of Yorkshire's best at lunch-time, and have snake-hips like me, you will encounter no problem. Otherwise, be guided by your dealer as to which is the best size to suit you.

    The Aquion Pro costs £474, plus 15 per cent extra for the made-to-measure service. Get one that fits.
Aquion (Airsub International) 01404 890196, www.aquion-dive.com

Modern membrane drysuits do not keep you warm. Their job is to keep your insulation dry. The insulation you choose makes the difference as to whether you get cold or not.
    Caroline Unpronounceablevic (a mid-European name, I believe) has run CBear since she broke away from the original Polar Bear company. I prefer to call her Caroline Bear.
    It's been a long time, but some divers still tend to refer to their diving undergarments as woolly bears and Caroline has wisely been reluctant to let the "bear" connection go.
    A bear is certainly a necessity when using a membrane-style drysuit, and the Bicore undersuit is one of her latest offerings.
    It is less bulky than some other undersuits because Caroline had the British neoprene drysuit diver in mind when she designed it and, unlike membrane drysuits, neoprene has its own insulating properties. Therefore the Bicore provides a lesser degree of insulation than some other undersuits.
    However, always with an eye for the main chance, I saw the possibilities of using it with a traditional membrane suit in the less-than-warm embrace of the northern Red Sea this winter.
    More fitted than many alternative undergarments, the Bicore has an elasticated back and leaves you looking less like LaLa between dives than some other more voluptuous duvet-style suits. You get fewer comments from non-divers or requests for autographs from mothers of pre-school children when wearing it. The sleeves also have a lycra gusset feature at the wrists.
    I wore it and did not get cold, but then again, would I have been warmer in another suit? We'll never know! I do know that this suit is very stylish as undersuits go and, to be so, its quilted material is cut and stitched.
    I believe that at any point where there is stitching the thermal barrier may be bridged and heat lost. That's why duvets are made the way they are. It is a sacrifice made at the altar of style. You might have to be a little bit cooler if you want to look good!
    Always believing in using minimum weight, I felt it was important for me to avoid suffering the trials and tribulations of air caught in the undersuit when the time came for me to dump the last of the air in the drysuit, in the shallows. The mesh vent at the shoulder obviously helped with that.
    I also found that the pockets were padded enough that I could carry my watch safely with me without it being permanently embossed on my groin by suit-squeeze.
    So whether you need a thinner undersuit for use with a neoprene drysuit or one for use with a membrane suit in water that is not quite so chilling, the Bicore undersuit might prove ideal.

    It is available in a range of stock sizes for around £94
CBear 01566 777636, www.c-bear.co.uk