- Messages
- 5,884
- Reaction score
- 2,998
- Location
- Lake Worth, Florida, United States
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
K,
This is really a good question, because with the "typical" freediving fins like Mares and Cressi, it is very hard to do effective reverse kicks ( usually most will not have the right angle between foot plane and fin, and often blade charicteristics are poor for this degree of precision control) and less than ideal for helicopter turns. But this is alot like saying "all paddle fins" are "--"...because all freedive fins are not alike. I have found the stiff version of the DiveR freedive fins allows me to reverse kick even against a current, which you wont find too many people with jet fins attempting...and these DiveR fins do spectaculr helicopters and take Frog kicking to an entirely different place---one frog kick and HUGE glide, is a different world. Not smart for low overhead, as they will stick up too high and hit the ceiling, but for Open water diving, they are awesome. Mustang C 4's are carbon fiber, and almost as fast as the DiveR's , with the fins a little too soft to be an ideal control surface for reverse kicks, though everything else works well---except that C4's cost a fortune, and are too fragile to giant stride with
DiveR is supposed to be sending me some shortened versions of the DiveR freedive fin, that the creator or them (Ray Powell) believes will be of a lenth similar to the bigger jetfins, but with control charicteristics that will be a "Game changer" for many divers, along with the efficiency of the bigger DiveR freedive fins...These would be my choice for a low overhead penetration dive, if they are as good as I expect they will be.
To finish answering you though, with the big DiveR's, cruising a silty bottom like our Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park is done using frog kick with amazing results...amazing because frog kick is suddenly absolutely as fast as you could want it to be, or as slow, and with great instant stopping or turning precision. I ALSO use a kick which is a hybrid of a frogkick and a dolphin kick, when just a little higher up over the bottom, if I need to beat an incoming or outgoing tidal flow ( which can run at over 2 mph).
This is really a good question, because with the "typical" freediving fins like Mares and Cressi, it is very hard to do effective reverse kicks ( usually most will not have the right angle between foot plane and fin, and often blade charicteristics are poor for this degree of precision control) and less than ideal for helicopter turns. But this is alot like saying "all paddle fins" are "--"...because all freedive fins are not alike. I have found the stiff version of the DiveR freedive fins allows me to reverse kick even against a current, which you wont find too many people with jet fins attempting...and these DiveR fins do spectaculr helicopters and take Frog kicking to an entirely different place---one frog kick and HUGE glide, is a different world. Not smart for low overhead, as they will stick up too high and hit the ceiling, but for Open water diving, they are awesome. Mustang C 4's are carbon fiber, and almost as fast as the DiveR's , with the fins a little too soft to be an ideal control surface for reverse kicks, though everything else works well---except that C4's cost a fortune, and are too fragile to giant stride with
DiveR is supposed to be sending me some shortened versions of the DiveR freedive fin, that the creator or them (Ray Powell) believes will be of a lenth similar to the bigger jetfins, but with control charicteristics that will be a "Game changer" for many divers, along with the efficiency of the bigger DiveR freedive fins...These would be my choice for a low overhead penetration dive, if they are as good as I expect they will be.
To finish answering you though, with the big DiveR's, cruising a silty bottom like our Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park is done using frog kick with amazing results...amazing because frog kick is suddenly absolutely as fast as you could want it to be, or as slow, and with great instant stopping or turning precision. I ALSO use a kick which is a hybrid of a frogkick and a dolphin kick, when just a little higher up over the bottom, if I need to beat an incoming or outgoing tidal flow ( which can run at over 2 mph).