Dive Gear

Virtually all of my diving is done in the chilly green waters of Scotland, so my kit bag is largely geared towards keeping me warm and safe in cold water and murky visibility!

Drysuit


Doing Titanic impressions is far warmer in Scotland if you're wearing  a toasty drysuit!


A couple of years ago I replaced my old and leaky drysuit with a new OThree MSF 500 made-to-fit neoprene one, and it is by far one of the best things I've bought for diving! The suit so far seems to be excellent and hard-wearing (if you've seen my Camera Gear page you'll know I give my stuff a pretty hard time) and is extremely comfortable in the water which makes up for its bulkiness on land. Anyway, I've done a lot of training dives in it (lots of kneeling on the seabed and getting dragged around on the beach) and it's done a couple of expeditions to Scapa Flow and Loch Carron now too without so much as a dribble of water getting in (at least, nothing that wasn't my own fault!) which is really more than I ask for in a suit.


Cylinders


I will carry an additional NITROX stage bottle if I'm planning decompression or want extra safety


If I'm diving in shallow water (<20m), I'll usually dive with a single 12L or 10L steel tank. For anything  deeper, or if I want to get two dives out of one air fill I'll use my twin independent 7L cylinders, and may or may not carry an additional 5.4L aluminium stage bottle containing 50% NITROX if I'm planning to do much decompression or have been doing multiple dives over a few days and want the extra safety.


Regulators


My primary regulators are Mares Abyss. If I'm diving with the twinset, I'll use two of these (one on a long hose to use as an octopus); on a single cylinder I'll use the short-hose one with an Apeks ATX40 Octopus reg. They're well used!


My primary regulator is the Mares Abyss which I've had and used for UK diving since upgrading from an Apeks ATX 40 about 5 years ago. Everyone has their own preferences for different regulators, and I must admit I don't know many people who have gone for the Mares regs over more popular UK brands like Scubapro or Apeks, but they've done me very well and they've served me excellently whether I've been diving at 6m or 40m.

Apeks ATX40 NITROX regulator

Using a different type of mouthpiece is an extra guarantee that I won't start breathing NITROX by accident when I'm too deep to breathe it safely.


My stage-cylinder regulator is a NITROX clean Apeks ATX40 with a button guage.


BCD / Wing



If I'm diving with a single cylinder, I'll use a Buddy Explorer TD jacket and keep the set up very clean and simple since I primarily use this set up when I'm training novice divers. The Buddy jackets (by AP Valves) are absolute workhorses and despite never really bothering to clean it after diving, it's still going strong after almost 10 years of use. All the jackets we use in GUSAC are also made by AP Valves and we've yet to have any problems with them despite years of heavy use (and abuse!).

And modelling my twinset + stage + camera!
If I'm using the twinset, I'll attach them to a single-bladder Diverite Recwing which (like most wings) is ridiculously comfortable to wear and allows less restricted movement compared to a traditional jacket-type BCD.

Accessories



Northern Diver backup torch


In addition to the basic SCUBA kit described above, I also use a Suunto D6 dive computer whenever I dive, and may also wear my old Aladin Pro Ultra computer as well if I'm doing a lot of deeper diving and want the redundancy. I am also in the market for a new primary torch at the moment, but for the time being I'm using an LED Northern Diver backup torch which is actually very good and provides a good amount of light for very little money & size. 


Custom Divers Reel (which is awesome!) and DSMB.

I will also carry a DSMB (delayed surface marker buoy) and reel with me on most dives, and I use a Custom Divers ratchet reel which I can honestly say is the best reel I've ever used underwater. It's relatively heavy, but there's no trigger system which makes deploying the DSMB far simpler and it's virtually impossible to tangle up the line. Because it's negatively buoyant, if everything goes wrong you can even just drop the reel midwater to free your hands, and continue to use the line as you would a shotline and sort it all out back on the boat!

1 comment:

  1. Indeed a helpful post! I got my Greece Visa Appointment scheduled yesterday as I have been planning to undertake Scuba Diving at some of the epic sites in Greece. Your post has answered most of my Scuba-diving related questions. Keep up the good work.

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