Spent the afternoon wandering the floor. I really enjoyed seeing and coveting all that great equipment, and places that I'll likely never get to.
I spent some time talking to Patrick Duffy at the Oxycheq booth, said hello to Jarrod at Halcyon, shook hands with Ned Deloach, and met Bernie Chowdhury who wrote The Last Dive at the Immersed display. I even ran into Walter from scubaboard.
One thing that struck me was that the amount of equipment that is either OEM'd by the same asian manufacturer, or it's shameleesly knocked off. I swear I saw Cressi Big-Eyes that didn't say Cressi on them that had a MSRP of half of the Big Eyes. Either way it's taught me that just because it doesn't have a brand name on it doesn't mean it's no good. There's a lot of no name regs out there too that suprised me. Someone must be buying them though as some of the displays were pretty big.
The silliest things I saw? A toss up between the DPV that attaches to the bottom of your tank, and the portable fins that slip into your flip flops. A close second was a pivoting fin that straps to the outside of your leg keeping your feet free - for what they don't explain.
As I can never leave a dive shop without buying something, my wife worried that going to a convention hall full of stuff I would end up trading away the house for new equipment. I told her not to worry as I really didn't need anything new (I rarely do, but that hasn't never stopped me.)
I have been inquiring about O2 analysers lately, and after checking out all the different offerings at the manufacturer's booths, I ended up getting the Amoxtec Analox O2EII. They were selligg them out of their booth for $165 - a deal I couldn't pass up.
I almost bought a new O2 Quikstick for $145, (not to be confused with the UBS O2 Stick who they have split away from
) but the O2EII unit seems much more substantial and I read some good things about it online.
A great show - well worth the visit.
Marc