Zeagle Ranger -- my personal negative review

[Hawkwood]

Where are the buckles that hold the wing down? And how many of them are there? I was with the second diver and her wing tacoed badly (well, actually I guess, it tacoed very well!).

One on each side.



With the buckles fastened, there is no way the wings should flap around.

 

[mmadiver]

I have had the opportunity to dive twice in the last few weeks with people using the Zeagle Ranger. I cannot at all recommend this setup for someone using a single tank. The lift capacity is too great, and the "wing" portion is fabricated to be usable with double tanks. As a result, the center portion of the "wing" is broad, as one needs to have to accommodate doubles. With the huge wing, which has its lift heavily biased toward the hips of the diver, and the broad center, the result is that, with the average single tank, the wing severely "tacos", or wraps up around the tank, making the gas in the lower portion of the wing very difficult to vent when the diver is horizontal.

Both divers had tremendous buoyancy problems, and were only able to vent when nearly vertical.

I cannot recommend this particular setup for single tank divers. Do not be persuaded by the argument that it works for single and double tanks. It doesn't.

I don't think I've ever posted a thread like this in the past. But I can't remember ever encountering a piece of equipment I thought was causing the diver using it as much difficulty as this was, for both divers.

Did you personally dive a ranger? Did you observe the two divers in a different BCD and were they able to maintain good trim? Is it possible the issue was skill related and not due to the equipment?


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[Peter Guy]

Hawkwood -- THANK YOU. To me this points out one of the problems for us poor instructors -- there is a lot of gear out there and guess what, we don't know everything about everything! And this is where Scubaboard shines -- lots of information available just for the asking.

 

[Hawkwood]

Cool! Was that the issue?

Will Lynne have to "update" her original post?

 

[Peter Guy]

Waiting to do diving with her again and then we'll know if that fixes it.

 

[fisheater]

Before I went to a BP/W, I dove a Ranger. Didn't have those issues, but I did use the wing buckles as directed.


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[TSandM]

I'm pretty sure the guy I dove with had the wing buckles done. I looked at his gear after the dive, to see if it appeared possible to put a different wing on the rig, so I looked at the attachment points.

 

[fisheater]

Strange. He couldn't make use of the either of the two butt dumps?


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[Aqua-Andy]

Hawkwood, thanks for the picture. One design flaw I noticed when I was diving a Ranger is the pockets. The pockets on the Ranger are horrible! This is why, look at the picture previously posted and see where the zipper is at the closed position. If you are in horizontal trim the pocket opens from the bottom. When I posted this in the Zeagle forum they said it was the first time they herd of an issue with there pockets . Every time I would open the pocket all the contents in it would fall out, what a pain in the back side. I guess if you dive like a seahorse you would never have an issue with the zipper arrangement of the pockets.

 

[PfcAJ]

Hawkwood, thanks for the picture. One design flaw I noticed when I was diving a Ranger is the pockets. The pockets on the Ranger are horrible! This is why, look at the picture previously posted and see where the zipper is at the closed position. If you are in horizontal trim the pocket opens from the bottom. When I posted this in the Zeagle forum they said it was the first time they herd of an issue with there pockets . Every time I would open the pocket all the contents in it would fall out, what a pain in the back side. I guess if you dive like a seahorse you would never have an issue with the zipper arrangement of the pockets.

Most divers do dive like seahorses. Problem solved!