Fossil_Diver
Contributor
One advantage the ranger has over the BP/W is that newb divers on cattle boats won't give you weird looks and they will accept you as one of the herd if you are wearing a jacket. Other than that I can't think of any other advantage a Ranger has over a BP/W.
A Ranger is very good for what it is. It is an excellent jacket for people that like jackets. I have one but haven't used it in a long time, not since I went old school and started using a plastic blowmold backpack. Sometimes I attach a wing to it and sometimes I don't. But I do mostly shore dives or river and swimming hole dives with a metal detector or I go looking for fossils. These are usually shallow water dives. A lot of the time I dive until I am low on air and then I just stand up and wade to shore lol. My old Scubapro blowmold backpack with a steel 72 on it serves me very well for this type of diving. I also often overweight myself on purpose because it is difficult to stay in one place on the bottom and dig a target if I my buoyancy is fine tuned. I end up getting pushed around by the surf in shallow water. I wear enough weight so that I hit the bottom with a thud and a cloud of sand like an anchor hitting bottom. I have a steel BP but for this type of diving I find the contour of the plastic backpack to be a little more comfortable in a t-shirt or bare skin and they have handles on them that make lugging tanks around easy compared to a metal BP. And plastic backpacks are dirt cheap compared to a steel plate. But this is a specialized use and I think a regular metal BP is better for most other types of diving.
I think the Ranger and most jackets have too much padding and I don't care much for integrated weights. I mostly solo dive and integrated weights just make the rig uncomfortably heavy to don by flipping it over my head.
A Ranger is very good for what it is. It is an excellent jacket for people that like jackets. I have one but haven't used it in a long time, not since I went old school and started using a plastic blowmold backpack. Sometimes I attach a wing to it and sometimes I don't. But I do mostly shore dives or river and swimming hole dives with a metal detector or I go looking for fossils. These are usually shallow water dives. A lot of the time I dive until I am low on air and then I just stand up and wade to shore lol. My old Scubapro blowmold backpack with a steel 72 on it serves me very well for this type of diving. I also often overweight myself on purpose because it is difficult to stay in one place on the bottom and dig a target if I my buoyancy is fine tuned. I end up getting pushed around by the surf in shallow water. I wear enough weight so that I hit the bottom with a thud and a cloud of sand like an anchor hitting bottom. I have a steel BP but for this type of diving I find the contour of the plastic backpack to be a little more comfortable in a t-shirt or bare skin and they have handles on them that make lugging tanks around easy compared to a metal BP. And plastic backpacks are dirt cheap compared to a steel plate. But this is a specialized use and I think a regular metal BP is better for most other types of diving.
I think the Ranger and most jackets have too much padding and I don't care much for integrated weights. I mostly solo dive and integrated weights just make the rig uncomfortably heavy to don by flipping it over my head.
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