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DRYSUIT
DUI MADE ITS NAME IN THE '80s with a drysuit design that was, quite frankly, the best. The company combined that with a material that seemed almost indestructible.
Success was assured, until manufacturing costs put the suits from this now California-based company beyond the reach of most of us.
Lately we are seeing a plethora of DUI-style suits from other sources arriving in the marketplace. Protec is a small business based on Merseyside and makes an unashamed and inexpensive copy of such a suit.
The Protec Explorer has most of the DUI features, including the telescoping torso that allows the diagonal-zip front-entry suit to be pulled over the head but then made neat with a tuck and crotch strap; internal braces to hold it all up while you get dressed; conical latex neck and wrist seals; and a neoprene collar over the neck seal.
Its front dryzip is made neat beneath a flap closed with a second conventional zip. All the seams are double-stitched, glued and double-taped on the inside, and there is a choice of three different materials. These include a polyester trilaminate, a 350gsm nylon trilaminate and a rather shiny lightweight (240gsm) nylon trilaminate. I was sent a suit made to measure in the lightweight material.
Now, I have to admit that I made a bit of a mistake. I was expecting to take this suit to a wintry Red Sea and use little in the way of an undersuit. Instead, I found myself squeezing into the Protec suit in early spring-time Capernwray. So it was cut for a figure other than one wearing a bulky undersuit.
Let's draw a veil over the effort I put into getting into the Protec suit when I first tried it on, and the amount my Weezle undersuit was compressed and hence the reduced insulation it might have offered me.
Instead, let's look at the fact that I was actually able to close the zip all on my own. This was because the start of the zip and the end of it were both within reach. That's a first, and now I can stop saying that there is no such thing as a self-donning suit.
However, the penalty was that the aperture through which I had to climb was a little smaller than I really needed. I could have done with a longer zip. We had to call the fire brigade when I wanted to get out of it.
Longevity is not something for which I can easily test. I still smart from the memory of another suit I once tested that was fine for me, and I said so. Little was I to know that the people who bought it on my recommendation would within six months find they had drysuits that leaked like sieves.
I cannot tell you whether the material used by Protec's manufacturer is man enough for the job. So if you buy one of these suits and have problems with durability, you have his phone number!
The Protec suit also comes equipped with comfortable Gates neoprene boots, reinforced knee-pads, a fairly useful thigh-mounted pocket, and a chest-mounted Apeks rotating inflation valve.
The suit I tried was fitted with an Apeks low-profile auto-dump, though I understand that a cuff-dump, so popular with divers north of the M62, is an option.
The point of a suit like this is that it gives you the possibility of diving in a drysuit but to be streamlined, as if in a wetsuit. So the measurements I sent reflected my intentions to dive in water of around 22°C rather than 7 or 8°.
I used the Protec suit while doing trial dives with half a dozen DPVs. This is quite a good test for a drysuit, because the seals get subjected to a strong flow of water.
In the event, I didn't use my own undersuit for these dives in the Protec, but I am happy to report that the one I borrowed stayed bone-dry.
I had to borrow a second undersuit after the other drysuit I was using ended up as wet on the inside as it was on the outside, such were the strenuous conditions.
Of course, I write about the specification of the suit I was sent to try. Because Protec is almost a one-man-band operation, I am sure that paying customers can have almost any personal modifications they care to specify.The Protec Explorer costs £690 in all three sizes and fabrics. It's not a cheap suit - but it is about the third of the price of the equivalent DUI suit.
Protec 0151 639 1390, www.protecdrysuits.com
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+ A successful and proven design at an attainable price
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- Durability needs to be proven
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FIN STRAPS
WAY BACK IN 1972, when the pound was worth a pound, I bought a dinner suit at Moss Bros. It cost £250.
In 2003, I bought a second suit. It was much nicer and made of pure wool but it cost the same. Why? Because it was actually made in China.
You may recall me extolling the virtues of Apollo stainless-steel fin-straps.
These items are beautifully engineered, but you need to take a hacksaw and a drill to your fins to fit them. It's quite a decision, because once you've sawn the lugs off your favourite pair of fins, there's no going back.
I admit to having ruined a perfectly good pair of Mares Quattros when I got distracted during the process and drilled one of the holes for the fixing bolts in the wrong spot.
And then there's the cost. These Japanese products work out at around £55 a pair.
The enterprising guys at Beaver Sports, always with an eye for a business opportunity, decided that they could get equally good stainless-steel fin-straps made more cheaply. Where? In China, of course.
When I say more cheaply, I mean a lot more cheaply. You can buy a pair of Beaver stainless-steel fin straps for less than 20 quid.
Not only that, but they come equipped with conventional plastic fin buckles that simply substitute for the ones you already have fitted to most modern fins.
No cutting or drilling, just snap and click. Job done!
So what's the point? Why are they better than conventional rubber fin-straps? Well, they simply spring into place and hold your foot firmly in the pocket of your fin. There is no adjustment once you've bought and fitted the right size.
A rubber loop makes getting a grip of them easy above or below the surface. Once you've used spring fin-straps, you will never want to go back and you will never break a fin-strap again.
An old pair of Mares Quattros have just replaced my Apollo fins as favourites because they weigh a lot less and, with these Beaver straps, they are just as comfortable and convenient to use.
Never again will I find myself sitting in the annexe-boat of a liveaboard, glumly and helplessly holding up a broken rubber fin-strap and trying to explain to a crew-member who hardly speaks English where he might find a spare set in my cabin, while overheating divers nearby quietly curse me for holding up their dive.
My only reservation is that the plastic buckles of the Beaver product might get brittle with time and then fracture, but that's only a guess. It will take a lot of dives for me to find out.
Beaver Stainless-Steel Fin-Straps come in four sizes from S to XL and cost £17. You can fit them in seconds.
Beaver Sports, www.beaversports.co.uk
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+ Obviously better than conventional straps
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- Judgment subject to long-term use
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LIGHT
AND MR KOWALSKI SAID: "LET THERE BE LIGHT," and there was light, lots of it!
Not only that, but it was not a watery yellow temporary light caused by the lamp gently filling up with water because you had reassembled it incorrectly after charging.
Mr. Kowalski said: "Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing and divers cannot be trusted to clean and grease O-rings", so he organised the charging of his lights in such a way that there was no need to break into the lamp to get to the battery. The charging leads were simply inserted through the outside of the lamp's aluminium housing.
That sums up the success of Kowalski lights in the diving market. When all is said and done, you want a light that gives out a bright, reliable light.
So what does the new Kowalski Mini Xenon add to that? Firstly, sophisticated electronics that allow you to recharge it at any state of discharge. You can always top it up for a night dive if you used it for any period during the day.
It does not matter which way round you plug in the external female charging jacks. Polarity is not important. In line with most modern chargers, you can plug it into any voltage supply between 90 and 280V.
It takes only 80 minutes to recharge it from flat. A red light indicates if it is still charging, and this turns to green when it's done. Then there's the three-year guarantee on everything save the battery (one year) and, of course, the bulb that has no guarantee at all.
Different from its brothers and sisters made by Mr Kowalski, the Mini Xenon has a 10W HID that gives out a very penetrating, if cool, light.
This light will burn at full power for around 90 minutes but, unusually for an HID set-up, the brightness can be reduced to about half in order to double the burntime.
HID bulbs do not like being turned on and off. In fact, their longevity is measured by the number of times they will fire up. So it's best to turn on an HID lamp and leave it on. In fact it's true of any lamp used under water that bulbs usually blow with the current surge causing by initial switching.
However, having waited the few moments needed for it to achieve maximum brightness, a dimmer switch allows you to reduce that brightness. When it comes to turning the lamp off, you have to turn it back up to full brightness first.
I had a little trouble with this, because it proved quite hard to turn it from half- to full-power without going too far with the knurled control wheel. Too often I found myself accidentally switching it off altogether.
Mistakes like that could unnecessarily shorten the expensive HID bulb's life, so I found myself either using it on full power or half power but never switching between the two once it was in use.
The Mini Xenon is only 20cm long by 6cm in diameter and weighs just 1.2kg, so I felt no reluctance in packing it for a trip across the world. It's a very smart bit of kit, designed with almost Scandinavian sleekness.
How did it fare under water? I was recently taken to task by another lamp manufacturer. We had compared the beams of a range of HID lamps in a side-by-side comparison test and he argued that, because all the lamps and ballasts (DC voltage pump circuits) were made by the same manufacturer, their light outputs had to be the same.
Well, they weren't. That's because we are interested less in how bright the bulb is and more in how bright a beam will light our way. That depends on the design of the reflector.
Mr Kowalski has taken two years to design an efficient reflector for this lamp. That's because the HID bulb is not a point-source like a conventional bulb.
The new lamp has a spot reflector, though I understand that a flood reflector that will make this lamp suitable for use with small video cameras is under development.
I took it to the Caribbean and it worked marvellously during the first night dive. Its beam was direct and bright, if a little cooler than I favour. It was certainly a lot brighter than any of the lights used by the other 10 divers in the water on that particular dive.
Alas, a short trip with Cayman Express revealed its weakness, because when I unpacked it at the next island destination it had ceased to work.
I have yet to find out if it was the expensive HID bulb or some other part of its electronics that could not sustain the rigours of the journey, despite being packed in the same case as all my camera equipment. Suffice to say that the recharging-light showed neither red not green.
The Kowalski Mini Xenon is not cheap - with its charger, it costs £535.
Lighthouse Diving 01599 577277
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+ Usual Kowalski quality and simplicity
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- The dimmer switch may cost more in HID bulbs in the long run
- Costly
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BC
THIS CONVENTIONAL BC from the well-known French manufacturer looks as comfortable as its name would imply. It has a soft lining to its cummerbund, shoulder area and backpack, and even the collar is softened so that it won't rub on your neck.
I found it a little bulky, which meant the addition of a couple of kilos of lead over slimmer rival offerings to achieve neutral buoyancy. However, this was a small price to pay for a BC with big accessible zipped pockets and two well-positioned upper dump-valves that let the air out during an ascent without having to give it a second thought.
One dump-valve is operated by pulling on the corrugated hose of the direct-feed inflator. The other is worked by pulling on a toggle that is neatly threaded through to exactly where you would expect to find it at the front shoulder facing.
For head-down descents, there is also a lower dump operated by an equally easy-to-find cord and toggle.
If air gets trapped in corners of the buoyancy-bag of a BC when I need to dump it, I find that to be inconvenient, if not downright dangerous. But the Beuchat Masterlift Comfort passes the test, even if at first I had slight difficulty locating the inflator button during a descent, because it is so well integrated with the contours of the direct-feed control.
The cummerbund is easily adjusted for girth. There are sufficient additional stainless-steel D-rings - that is, four.
The camband includes a nice little idea. It is attached to a buckle with a flattened D-ring that grabs a matching hook at its opposite end.
This makes it exceptionally easy to remove from a tank, with no awkward sliding up over the cylinder. However, I still found it best to attach the hook first and slide it like any other camband over a fresh tank.
Now we come to the bit where those French lawyers start huffing. Beuchat BCs used to employ a unique system for retaining the ditchable weight-pouches of its integrated-weight system, and it worked. For some reason, the designer of this BC has abandoned that system for something that, quite frankly, does not work properly.
The weight-pouches might take 8kg of lead each, but I began to feel insecure with more than a couple of kilos in each side. All too often, the retaining clip that held the quick-release toggle (left) came undone.
This fact would be discovered just as a fully loaded pouch was about to drop away into 2000m of water. I was wall-diving, and this did tend to take the edge off my pleasure.
I needed a total of 12kg of lead to be neutrally buoyant in the thick suit I was wearing, but resorted to spreading it around in various places.
I put 2kg in each of the two capacious trim-weight pockets, which are closed with pinch-clips and located more towards the front of the BC than is normal. I divided the other 4kg between the two zipped pockets.
It was not ideal, but it reassured me that I would not find myself rocketing towards the surface as my weight-pockets plunged in the other direction. What a pity, because it spoiled an otherwise excellent BC.
The Beuchat MasterLift Comfort comes in sizes XS-XL and costs £299.
Typhoon International 01642 486104, www.typhoondive.com
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+ Extremely comfortable conventional BC
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- Poorly designed integrated-weight system
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