First off, I'll apologize. This is not an fdog review -- there are no pictures.
But there is a big, huge, massive, persistent grin right in the middle of it.
We bought the vests over a year ago. But the vest alone is not the answer. You have to have a way for the power to get into the suit, and you have to have a power source. After several months of procrastination, we bought the SiTech dry suit inflator valves with the power port-E/O connector built in. They then sat in the shelves downstairs for months, until we got up to Dive X-tras to buy E/O connectors to put on one of our canisters.
Then the whole thing sat for six months, because I didn't know how to do what needed to be done. (Among other things, I didn't know if there was any concern about polarity on the vests.)
Finally, my friend airsix came to visit, and walked me through replacing the light cord with the E/O connectors, and we got the connectors soldered onto the power ports. And I got to go diving with my heated vest.
The bottom line? I have no idea how I've survived six years of Puget Sound diving without this thing.
I've played with it a bit, to figure out how best to use what turns out to be about 90 minutes of power from a 9.5 aH NiMH battery. It's fun to run it the whole dive, but that's not great for the battery. Diving for about 30 to 40 minutes, or right up to the point where you begin to think, "I'm starting to get cold, we should begin heading in," and then turning the vest on, seems to be perfect. About 90 seconds after you flip the switch, you feel as though someone has wrapped you up in the most wonderful electric blanket ever, and as far as I can tell, I just don't get any colder from that point on. I haven't pushed it past a 60 minute dive yet, but I'm sure I could get there.
The vest is thin and light, and if it has affected my buoyancy at all, I haven't noticed it yet.
After my dry suit, this is the single biggest thing I've done for in-water comfort. And both of those things cost about the same. Heating doesn't come cheap; the vests were about $600, the ports were about $150, the E/O connectors were $75 or so, and the battery itself, if you had to buy it new, would run over $300. Luckily, we had a sort of defunct canister light, so the canister and battery were not really being used. (But I am now scheming about what kind of LiIon battery I can buy to fit in the canister, to increase that 90 minute number!)
But there is a big, huge, massive, persistent grin right in the middle of it.
We bought the vests over a year ago. But the vest alone is not the answer. You have to have a way for the power to get into the suit, and you have to have a power source. After several months of procrastination, we bought the SiTech dry suit inflator valves with the power port-E/O connector built in. They then sat in the shelves downstairs for months, until we got up to Dive X-tras to buy E/O connectors to put on one of our canisters.
Then the whole thing sat for six months, because I didn't know how to do what needed to be done. (Among other things, I didn't know if there was any concern about polarity on the vests.)
Finally, my friend airsix came to visit, and walked me through replacing the light cord with the E/O connectors, and we got the connectors soldered onto the power ports. And I got to go diving with my heated vest.
The bottom line? I have no idea how I've survived six years of Puget Sound diving without this thing.
I've played with it a bit, to figure out how best to use what turns out to be about 90 minutes of power from a 9.5 aH NiMH battery. It's fun to run it the whole dive, but that's not great for the battery. Diving for about 30 to 40 minutes, or right up to the point where you begin to think, "I'm starting to get cold, we should begin heading in," and then turning the vest on, seems to be perfect. About 90 seconds after you flip the switch, you feel as though someone has wrapped you up in the most wonderful electric blanket ever, and as far as I can tell, I just don't get any colder from that point on. I haven't pushed it past a 60 minute dive yet, but I'm sure I could get there.
The vest is thin and light, and if it has affected my buoyancy at all, I haven't noticed it yet.
After my dry suit, this is the single biggest thing I've done for in-water comfort. And both of those things cost about the same. Heating doesn't come cheap; the vests were about $600, the ports were about $150, the E/O connectors were $75 or so, and the battery itself, if you had to buy it new, would run over $300. Luckily, we had a sort of defunct canister light, so the canister and battery were not really being used. (But I am now scheming about what kind of LiIon battery I can buy to fit in the canister, to increase that 90 minute number!)
)
