Ask any group of divers and they will all say that the regs they are using is great. I am the same having used a Poseidon Jetstream for the last 7 years with no bother. But when I dived with the Beuchat VTR80 I could not believe how bad they were. Maybe I am missing something with the description as it says they are made for cold water, but does that exclude temperatures above 18º, maybe they are not made to work in temperate climates.
If the reg has one saving grace its small compact and light, but after that it’s all downhill.
My diving kit does not look very good because it gets used almost every day but one thing that I am always aware of is how it looks when put together, I like everything tucked away and neat, again with the VTR 80 it looked like a spiders web of tubes sticking out behind you and a sure sign that if going through Lava tunnels I can guarantee somewhere along the line is going to get caught up.
In the water things did not improve at all, the Venturi slide did stop it from free flowing when I first hit the water but when heading for the bottom pushing the slide the opposite way seemed to do nothing at all.
A couple of minutes into the dive and I am not happy, in the normal flat diving attitude things seemed to be reasonably ok but as soon as I moved my head from side to side the reg flooded, and when looking between my legs at people behind me it seemed to lose the plot altogether. As you can imagine the whole experience did not fill me with joy and I made a point of sticking very close to the other guys.
While gassing off I transferred the reg over to a couple of the guys I was diving with and after a few breaths they both turned there noses up. I actually finished the dive using my Octopus as this worked 100% better than the main reg.
I do try all sorts of kit out and generally they are all very similar, but these regs are awful, maybe they are a set of Friday night specials I do not know but when you are putting your life on the line in a piece of equipment like this you expect it to work, these I am afraid did not work at all well.
Sometimes things do go a little haywire but most things can be sorted out there and then. But if I were a new diver having brought this regulator and it was brand new out of the box I would probably give the sport up as I found no fun in continually spitting water out. Also I feel that there should be a certain amount of care when it comes to selling these, the most important piece of equipment to a total novice. What on earth possessed them to sell a so called set of Ice Regs to a guy who intends diving in and around the Canary Islands, maybe because it was the show, they are thinking we can shift all of last years stuff that did not sell to some poor un-expecting soul.
I am at this moment talking with the people who sold my friend this Reg set at the Dive show in Birmingham and I will keep you informed as to their reply!!
I have also sent this to a couple of Dive magazines in the UK.
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