Fin Lineup - Any Questions?

[donmoore]

Scott,
I can see where they would be good for hockey. The plastic is very rubbery and has a little snap to it, but they are built in a way that they have some stiffness. I would e-mail leisurepro.com and ask them. My friend bought them this year. The scubastore has Plana Avanti Tre in smaller sizes, which looks similar, but with 3 rubber ribs instead of the 4 the quattros have.
don

 

[Murat]

Re: in the begining....

Originally posted by unirdna
....of this thread, I had asked that if you have a fin review of your own to please post it.


Ted

Well i have some review to add but its not much proffesional like you guys made.




I am using Cressi Gara 3000 for a few month and made between 10-15 dives. Most of them is surface swim since i am not a deep freediver yet.

When i first get the fin (first time upgrading from soft scuba to the long blade) i though it was too heavy and hard to swim on surface. Coz the day before i was swimming with soft scuba ones After few day they become lighter and lighter. They become more confortable on the surface swimming coz they are REALLY FLEXIBLE. I just push my legs back without any cycling movement and i moved coz of the flexible blade push the water automatically. I also tried 15-17 meter ( my PB) dive with them and they worked great, that day i also made non stop 6 hours surface swimming. BTW for those who wants body comparision, i am 1.80-1.83 and weight 81-84kg. My legs are pretty powerfull as well but somehow calfs not . I also have meniscus on left leg and injured ankle from high school while playing basketball. But even in these situation i feel not much tired after 6 hour.

But in the last dive when i put my 5mm wetsuit on (only upper part) and used 5kg weight belt i had some diffuculty while departing from bottom. I felt that they don't have enough power to push me to the surface as fast as before. I also felt that my legs are adapted to the fins so i can easily overpower them now.

Overall good fins, you can do lots of surface swimming, even medium ranged dives as well.

For me, i have to find bit more powerfull fins for next summer.

Bye..

 

[sturgeon]

Murat,

Proffesional enough for me. Thanks for the review! It's always good to hear about the performance of new products.

Scott

 

[Mikko]

Gentlemen (and Ladies??),

I have now read the correspondence forwarded by Sven.

I do not quite understand what has gone wrong here. My bet is the notorious language barrier.
However, that is not of importance.

Sven's stuff will be out in matter of days and that's it.

Sorry about using this space for dealing with such matters.

If any of you guys experience any problems with SpecialFins service, PLEASE, do not hesitate to contact Jyri or myself, or preferably both ASAP.

Again, my deepest apologies for interrupting this great thread with such secondary issues.

Safe dives!
Mikko

 

[donmoore]

the notorious language barrier

Mikko and Jyri,
You mean you Estonia guys can’t understand American English Swedish California Slang? What’s wrong with you?

Sorry Sven and Ted, I just could resist!
don

 

[Jon]

You mean you Estonia guys can’t understand American English Swedish California Slang? What’s wrong with you

Don, you forgot "Wisconsonian".

Last weekend Ted and I went out spearfishing with a friend from Holland. He had the worst time understanding Ted- "What does 'Bug up your butt' mean?", he was thinking something 'way' different than what Ted had intended.rofl

BTW: Jyri has promised to send some demo fins to
Freedive-a-palooza next July. People are invited to purchase any of the fins he sends so that I don't have to 'foot the bill' sending them back to Estonia.

Jon

 

[Pezman]

@Murat

A healthy dolphin kick is one nice tool to get you off the bottom when you're feeling heavy -- you can more than double your lifting power. It's also a nice tool on the surface when you want to go a long distance in a short time.

In fact, a lot of guys use a dolphin kick for constant ballast to minimize the amount of wasted energy that comes from the slight twisting-untwisting of the body that happens when you kick "normally". There also seems to be some wasted energy due to turbulence as the fins pass each other when you're trying to kick fast, and a dolphin kick eliminates that effect.

I've been using JimGlynn's Millenniums in some O.ME.R. pockets that I scored from Ted and they dolphin kick particularly well. With my Gara 2000s, a dolphin kick was the only way that I could effectively surface swim. Next week, the new #4 Waterway fiber-blades get their test (along with the home-made fluid goggles ).

 

[Murat]

Thanks Pezman,

I already tried dolphin kick while departing bottom. And yes they are much faster than traditional way. But i concern how much oxygen does this dissipate compare to bcyles technique?

BTW there is one question in my mind for some time. If you stay more than enough in the bottom and you fell you are out of 02 while going up. How do you try to prevent SWB? Do you use dolphin kick so hard to reach the surface immediately or use cycling very slowly to not waste valuable o2????

 

[Adrian]

Murat,
As I also use the Gara 3000, I noticed that the dolphin kick is more efficient, and at least it seems that I'm using less effort to go further. I did some tests in the swimming pool, just using flutter kick vs dolphin and found that the dolphin always won out over the flutter. I tried to keep the conditions the same, not using the arms, and the procedure is more or less the following:

A) One strong dolphin kick and glide until I am not moving anymore.
B) One strong (complete with both legs) flutter kick and glide until I stop moving.

I covered the pool with less kicks using the dolphin. So therefore one might be able to assume that one also uses less O2.

Adrian

 

[Pezman]

I've definitely been there -- you're way under water, feel like crap and bolt for the surface. As long as you get to a depth where you're positively buoyant and have a good buddy on the surface, you pretty much know things are going to work out. However, I think that fast ascents like this can cause mild pulmonary and cerebral edemas from the combination of O2 depletion, exertion and rapid changes in ambient pressure (basically I got injured and I think that a fast ascent is what did it).

As far as a dolphin kick goes -- it doesn't necessarily use up more oxygen. It depends on how vigorously you're kicking. I guess I'm saying that if a bicycle kick isn't getting you off the bottom then a dolphin kick beats the alternative ...

As far as whether overly rapid ascent will trigger BO, I guess that it's a risk, but I've only ever samba'd twice in the water, and those were both dives where I was surfacing very gently and felt great (turns out a little too great ).

 

[Jon]

Good question, and something that I have been playing around with in the pool.

Lately I've been doing a series of 50 yard dynamic departs- starting every two minutes, which the sooner you get done the more time you have to rest before the next one starts.

I have found that when I do these with my monofin it takes about 30- 35 seconds to do one dynamic and I feel pretty tired out while resting-up for the next one.

IF I use my bi-fins, and swim flutter kick, it takes me 45- 50 seconds and I feel pretty relaxed when I am done. Even though I have less time to breath-up inbetween dynamics, I feel like I could do the bi-fin flutter dynamics all morning long- while I can't wait for the dolphin ones to be over with.:yack

I have only been able to play with this in the pool so far as we have started to move into shallower water for our winter diving/ spearing.

I have felt very comfortable with my mono in constant and love how it shoots me up from depth. My PB was stil done with bi-fins and I haven't really tested myslef with the mono yet.

These differences that I've noticed might result more from two different types of diivng vs. different fin strokes. As I was watching the Cyprus DVD I noticed that Pierre F. was using bi-fins for dynamic and a monofin for constant.

Has anyone else played around with this?

BTW: My dynamics with bi-fins were done with Sporasub Cruise's, Sporasub Radical's, Sporasub Pure's, and some Technisub plastic fins. It didn't make too much of a difference wich one I used, but the Radical's seemed to be the easiest on my legs after doing these for an hour.

Jon

 

[icarus pacific]

Originally posted by Jon
Good question, and something that I have been playing around with in the pool so far as we have started to move into shallower water for our winter diving/ spearing.

Has anyone else played around with this?

Jon

Just another example of why all pool owners should check and replace their filters regularly. :t Time to get the AAA map of outfalls out chubmeister?

 

[Mikko]

Donmoore,

Ummm...no, this is not what I meant......*LOL*
Jyri is Estonian....I'm a Finn....just to set things straight.

Cheers,
M

 

[Jon]

Last weekend I got a chance to spend some time in my friends BAT-30's.

They supplied a good kick when underwater and I really liked the way they dolphined much more than how they fluttered. On the surface they were fine if I went really slow. For faster surface swimming I thought that they were just too stiff, but this might have something to due with the lack of blade angle.

I should mention that even though the blades have no angles, the OMER foot pockets, that they were mounted in, do have an angle to them. As a result the overall, mounted, fin has a bit of an angle to it. I normally like a stiffer fin, my C4-40's are still my favorite, but with the BAT fins I would probably drop down to a 20.

One other fin that I have tried, and sold as soon as I could, was the Force Fin "freediving fin". This was their $495 wonder fin made out of their special "tan-delta" material and even had their patented " whisker" technology. I thought that I really could get a freediving fin that was short enough to fit into my carry-on bag, so I bought them.:duh Neeedless to say, THEY SUCKED!:head


To prove my point even further I let many people try them out while we played underwater hockey. The cheapest pair of $20 snorkleing fins worked better than they did. They were crappy for going to depth and I was lucky to get my cost back out of them- thank you E-bay! They might "test" well when worn by some super-fat scuba diver, but they have no buisness calling them a "freediving fin".

Part of their problem is that they also suck for surface swimming. The fin's recovery stroke is so fast that your foot flies out of the water and you loose energy.

I would strongly suggest that no one on here ever wastes a dime on them. The best thing would be to use them for a very out of shape scuba diver to do laps around the pool in.

Live and learn.

jon

 

[icarus pacific]

somebody call??

ahem... Anyways, I had the chance to check out the BAT 30's at my Ab Grab where Jammin' Jeff Stewart rolled up with a pair.

I was particularly impressed with the quality of the lamination and the milling performed on the blades. Maybe the tooling was getting worn when my Matrix blades underwent the shave, but the BAT's were really clean, especially in the milled out portions that give the blade it's stiffness and flexibility. They earned smooth points as well for the camo- 5 feet down and I couldn't see 'em.

They were stiffer than my Matrix 3's but what got me was the weight versus the Matrix's. I could have had a second set of blades and still been shy of the weight of a set of the BAT's. Truth be though that a couple of days of serious diving with the crue here and then a real manly day further North and outter West :mute left not a mark on them. The Jeff had some leg and back issues :crutch but he liked them for the forgiving kick they demanded. Lighter than my open heeled wonder-'capaz's and killa camo. I'd give them a serious looking at if you have good ankles.

 

[unirdna]

Re: somebody call??

Originally posted by icarus pacific
ahem... Anyways, I had the chance to be Jammin' Jeff Stewart.

I was particularly impressed with the quality performed. The tooling was getting worn when it underwent the shave, but the stiffness earned smooth points.

...and killa camo.

I thought the same thing [about the camo :hmm]. Omer does a lousy job of showing off the color and pattern with their online photos. Much more impressive when you're holdin' a pair.

TC

 

[icarus pacific]

Now hold on a minute!

Originally posted by unirdna
I does a lousy job of showing off with online photos. Much more impressive when you're holdin' a pair.
TC

Hold these, Ted-man :hmm

 

[Erik]

You asked for that one Ted
Erik Y.

 

[unirdna]

Oh, I ask for all of em ....you can be sure of that, amigo.

And just where the hell have you been during all of our 'fin' discussion? Meditating on top of the mountain?

 

[Erik]

Originally posted by unirdna
where the hell have you been during all of our 'fin' discussion? [/B]

Skulking.....
Cheers,
Erik (the monofinner) Y.