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Post by SeaRat on Jan 24, 2008 9:57:50 GMT -8
Dale and JohnA,
Like I said, I had a pair of the Farrallons with the leg brace in the 1980s, and had bought them new. They probably work well for those who have not dived much, and do not have good ankle flexibility. But for me, being a former competitive swimmer and having dived for many years, they did not work well. The reason was that the settings did not allow me to actually point my toes to gain the maximum benefit from the fin. Because they only went to an angle of about 20 degrees, the fin was very inefficient (more so than the same fin without the braces). Imagine kicking with any of your fins, but not being able to point your toes, and you can see the frustration I experienced. It was another of those great ideas which was implemented very poorly and without understanding of basic fin dynamics. This was the main reason that I did not go for these fins on ebay; I had already experienced them, and ultimately sold them off because I could not make them work. I even tried to file off the restricting plastic, but couldn't do it because of the design without actually destroying the joint.
John
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Post by DavidRitchieWilson on Feb 22, 2008 0:11:25 GMT -8
Just resurrecting this thread to publicise another link I chanced upon recently... Turkish diving equipment company Free-Sub makes a full-foot Jetfin with heel straps, like Beuchat's original design: www.free-sub.com/urunler/paletler/big/7.jpgI wonder whether this is the only full-foot fin still in production with heel straps? I know full-foot fins with heel straps, and even instep straps, were much more common in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Post by william on Feb 22, 2008 1:13:31 GMT -8
I remember when the ScubaPro Company 1st came out with the heavy Jetfins. They were offered in Black only and I never saw any Jetfins in other colors back in those days. It was around the mid 1960s I beleive. I was the 1st, in our dive club & the only one, it seemed, at most of our local diving spots to have them for a good while & they drew attention & questions from the other scuba divers. Our local dive shop was not carrying the ScubaPro Products at the time. I am thinking that ScubaPro was the 1st company, that had them available, so I assumed they were invented by them or they had bought the rights to manufacture & sell them. The clunky & heavy ScubaPro Jetfins were actually, the Best Fins for the beginner diver to buy & use, if he wanted to build up his/her leg muscles as fast & as much as possible. They sure tired people, like Me,ha,ha, out quickly when they first started useing them. They were very cumbersome, but they did have their good qualities. Once I had used them for a long while, they seemed to be very good, fast fins to be useing. { "I used a Slower-Stroke with a slightly Over-Extended leg swing, to make them less uncomfortable to use" } Doing that made them much easier to use. Then, it did not take very long to get used to them, even though they were very heavy. After a year, I seemed to be swimming with much less effort & slightly faster underwater than the other divers in our club too. It would be very interesting to hear the Timeline of when each major dive equipment company came out with their own version of the Jetfin. I know that all of them had their version of the Jetfin in time, with only small differences that ended up makeing a Big difference though, in how nice they worked out. To find and buy mine,I had to travel 50 miles north of Atlanta to a dive shop in Albertsville, I think it was, which the dive shop owner there,sold them to me at a nice, big discount. But the Scubapro Company had a Firm "Set-Price" for the Dive Shops to sell them at, and the other products they supplied shops with. When I was telling my friend, our LDS owner & our club president about the good price I had paid for miine, to my "Astonishment", he quickly Called the Scubapro Company, right then, & told them about the other dive store that sold the fins to me at the big discount. Later that week, our dive shop owner told me that the Albertsville Dive Shop that sold them to me at the discount was Banned or Black-Balled permanently by Scubapro. I am sure ScubaPro was very dissapointed when all the other companies started supplying the LDSs with their own types of the Jetfins & with good Discounts too,ha,ha.
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Post by duckbill on Feb 22, 2008 9:13:32 GMT -8
.................... he quickly called the Scubapro Company,right then & told them about the other dive store that sold the fins to me at the big discount. Busybodies........Bless their little jealous, malevolent hearts --------------------------------------------------------------------------- David, thanks for sharing that fin you found. I never knew there was such a beast that had both full foot pockets AND straps. Interesting.
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Post by DavidRitchieWilson on Feb 23, 2008 3:33:10 GMT -8
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Post by sea.explorer on Feb 23, 2008 8:01:04 GMT -8
Here are a couple of photos of a few different styles of jets from the Cousteau warehouse: They have full foot pockets, full-foot pockets w/ straps & an extra long pair of full-foot -Ryan
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dhaas
Regular Diver
Posts: 26
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Post by dhaas on Feb 23, 2008 11:43:54 GMT -8
Ryan,
Do you know the idea behind a full foot pocket AND a strap? I have used (and have) fixe palm straps over full foot fins.
I think fixe palmes were even recommended and shown when the Unisuit came out from Poseidon in Sweden. Although their own fin WAS a HUGE full foot fin and needed the fix palm straps to keep the fin from possibly blowing off your foot.....
Any insights?
dhaas
P.S. - Wasn't this design from Gustav da Valle when Healthways / Scubapro thing was getting started? Or maybe my memory is fuzzy.....
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Post by DavidRitchieWilson on Feb 23, 2008 13:03:33 GMT -8
Fixe-palmes, or fin grips, were invented and patented by the French diving equipment company Beuchat, which originally designed the Jetfin as a full-foot fin with heel straps. So far as I am aware, Scubapro only marketed Jetfins in the USA as open-heel fins. As for the Unisuit, I remember the 1960s ads portraying a diver wearing the suit in an overinflated state, like some kind of "Michelin Man". I think Cressi made full-foot fins to accompany the suit, sized somewhere in the 50s range (European 46 is roughly equivalent to US size 12). I would say that the addition of straps, whether heel or instep ones, preceded the invention of the Jetfin in Europe, probably being a feature of some European models, particularly Italian ones, in the late 1950s.
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