DIR

[DRE]

"If planning on buying gear and a person is interested in DIR a good thing to do is find out what exactly is recommended and why. The Fundamentals book does a good job of describing what is required for a piece of gear. Additionally, talking to the guys at FifthD, Extreme-Exposure or some of the more vocal guys, Like Mike Kane, can take care of a lot of questions."


Interesting point you brought up Joel. When it comes to buying DIR gear as recommended by Global Underwater Explorers, which was founded by Jarrod Jablonski, the one name that constantly is being referred to is Halcyon gear, whose founder and CEO is Jarrod Jablonski. The main distributor online of Halcyon gear is Extreme Exposure in Florida, owned by - let's take a guess - Jarrod Jablonski.
Five years ago George Irvine would tell you that the best bladder money could buy was the Diverite Classic Wing. Then his best buddy and divepartner Jarrod Jablonski started Halcyon Manufacturing, and all of a sudden the Diverite wing was a piece of stroke gear that was going to get you killed?!
At FifthD they'll tell you the DUI TLS350 is a piece of crap, and instead you should buy the suit manufactured under their name. Quite interesting to know is that Andrew Georgitsis(?) - owner of FifthD - couldn't get a DUI dealership because the largest DUI dealer in Seattle was across the street from him. Go figure.
A couple of years ago the main reg recommended by the WKPP was Scubapro - you were a stroke if you didn't dive it. Back then, one of the main WKPP explorers of the WKPP worked in Scubapro's R&D. Now he no longer does, and guess what, their favorite reg is Apeks.

What I'm trying to say is that there is more than just manufacturer of DIR equipment, and that a lot of the reasoning behind preferring one manufacturer by the DIR "topdogs" has a lot more to do than just the quality of the product. Question is whether the consumer is stupid enough to pay 50% for a similar piece of equipment just because so and so said so.

BTW, I'm about as close to DIR as you can get, yet I don't own a single piece of Halcyon equipment with the exception of my p-valve (which is the cheapest one around, and manufactured for Halcyon by Otter Drysuits).