Ralf Tech Travelight Tech BCD

...new lightweight BCD called the Ralf Tech Travelight Tech which is a wing design. For those who are not up on the technicalities of diving to give it its full name BCD stands for Buoyancy Control Device and is the means by which when at the surface a diver stays afloat as the jacket or wing design is attached via a hose to your air cylinder allowing you to add air to it similar to a life jacket and also to dump air out of it when you want to go down ...
...control your position in the water and to control both your ascent and descent speed.

As well as this primary use a BCD is also important as not only is your cylinder attached to it but also you attach or secure any number of additional items you need to dive safely such as torches, reels and numerous other things that are either secreted into zipped pockets or attached to metal D rings on the outside of the BCD. It needs to be hard ... more

Ask any diver who chooses to take his diving holidays abroad what their main gripe is and I bet you that it will be the excess baggage charges that they are subjected to by those money grabbing, crap food serving, can't fly in a little bit of fog, pirate airline companies who target the poor underpaid UK diver desperate for water temperatures that do not shrink your assets like taking investment advice from Nick Leeson does.

For some reason certain airlines do not class diving gear as sports items and do not allow any additional baggage allowance unlike golf or skiing equipment, some airlines do and I love them to bits but to be honest even an extra 5kg does not go any way near compensating someone for having to carry a full diving kit plus clothes for a week hence on most of my trips to Egypt I do not take anywhere near seven days worth of clothes however I do ensure I have a good supply of anti-perspirent.

In the interests of reducing the weight of the kit I carry I decided to invest in a new lightweight BCD called the Ralf Tech Travelight Tech which is a wing design. For those who are not up on the technicalities of diving to give it its full name BCD stands for Buoyancy Control Device and is the means by which when at the surface a diver stays afloat as the jacket or wing design is attached via a hose to your air cylinder allowing you to add air to it similar to a life jacket and also to dump air out of it when you want to go down underwater. Once underwater air can be added or dumped to control your position in the water and to control both your ascent and descent speed.

As well as this primary use a BCD is also important as not only is your cylinder attached to it but also you attach or secure any number of additional items you need to dive safely such as torches, reels and numerous other things that are either secreted into zipped pockets or attached to metal D rings on the outside of the BCD. It needs to be hard wearing ideally and also provide a good level of buoyancy however the stronger the BCD and the more metal D rings and fancy bits and pieces it has the more it weighs so it is a balancing act when deciding upon the impact on performance and the reduced weight that can make the difference between you receiving punitive excess baggage charges.

First off I was impressed with my new purchase, all in black and pretty hard wearing it was also incredibly simple to set up as it has a simple harness set up with a sternum strap and cummerbund that attaches around the waist. Apparently it does come with an optional extra of pockets which would have been nice when I was diving but then with this set up the idea is to reduce the weight rather than add to it.

In terms of how it was in the water well it was then that I missed my faithful, rather heavy Buddy Commando TD BCD which has seen me through the last five years of my diving career. Basically the BCD operated all well and good most of the time however I did find that on my ascent it was quite difficult to get the last of the air out of the BCD due to its design which saw some of the air trapped at the top of the jacket. The only way to get it out was to change body position to be able to use the dump valve at the bottom of the BCD and basically wiggling about to get it out much to the amusement of my buddy who thought that something nasty had managed to penetrate by wetsuit and was busy stinging me.

The other main problem I had was that the corrugated hose used to dump out air constantly gets pulled up really tight making it uncomfortable to operate. Other than that there was plenty of lift provided by the BCD and whilst I was only using a single 12 litre cylinder I felt confident that it could more than adequately cope with my normal UK configuration of twinned 10 litre cylinders however it is only designed for use with a single cylinder so I will not be trying out my theory any time soon.

On the whole I found it comfortable to wear both underwater and at the surface whilst waiting for the RIB's to pick us up and it provided an upright support position that did not force my head forward.

I would say that I'm happy with my purchase and certainly it helps reduce the weight load when I go abroad, it is annoying that the air dump is not perfect and for this reason I would probably not take it to some of the more challenging destinations abroad or if I was doing a lot of wreck penetrations.

The Travelight Tech retails at £339.00 from www.divingdirect.co.uk so I was quite pleased that I negotiated a price of £300 from my local diving shop.

Thanks for reading and rating my review.

 

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