Why the hate/ridicule for split fins?

[tridacna]

Funny...

I guess the fact that their site lists the Scubapro Jetfins as the most popular is also useless info. LP is someone's LDS, just not yours.

DRIS has Atomic Smoke in the Water split fins - 10 reviews of which 9 are 5 star. I guess DRIS is not an LDS either, according to your definition of LDS. And those reviews are useless as well?

I know LP better than most. My office is on 20 street - two blocks away from them. I've been in dozens of times. They're great but they're no LDS. DRIS is certainly an LDS but I'll hazard a wild guess and say that most of their business is online. Most reviews on vendor sites: LP, Amazon or DRIS are of little to no value. Simple advertising tools to help sell high margin goods.If you believe those reviews or "sales figures", there's a bridge not far from LP that's for sale.

Now back to splits...

 

[dmaziuk]

Yeah, I think I should just go back to Cozumel, hire a private DM and get picked up by the boat after a drift dive, wherever we might pop up.

But, in an effort to broaden my diving experience, I chose to dive off a moored liveaboard, where we have to make our own way back to the boat. So, as was explained to me, when we dive at a site where there is current, the first half of the dive will be against the current alongside a wall, and then we would turn around and swim with the current, making it easier to get back to the mothership. I never made it to the turn-around point.

Those aren't mutually exclusive: we had a number of dives on a recent trip where DM said "if there's not too much current we'll turn around at half tank, if there is too much we'll drift". A couple of dives ended up as drift dives.

 

[Carlos Danger]

Oh, I do like the ones in your profile pic...want to share with me where you got those?

I believe those are by Paul Schietekat; just a little something I picked up from the Virtual Shoe Museum. They are only for "special" occasions!

 

[covediver]

When split fins came out in the 90s, the some but not all of the cool scuba kids extolled the virtue of the fin and proclaimed by acclamation that only dweebs or outlaws would wear "paddlefins." Remember at this time tec diving with its insistence on the "one best way of doing it right" was just coming into its own as an extreme sport diving activity. It had not yet been sanctioned by the mainstream alphabet certification agencies and was therefore an "outlaw.". Then in the 2000s the trend among the cool kids changed as tec became more mainstream and amnesty was given by the alphabets to the outlaws. Now the cool kids all discovered the virtues of paddle fins and wearing split fins became heresy against the orthodoxy of tec. You see the same progression from horse collar bc to stab jackets, to backplate/wings. Salt water isn't the hardest thing on a diver's gear; its other divers.

 

[The Chairman]

There's a lot of hate going around the SBverse LOL.

Not really. The mods delete any real "hate" before most get to see it. People learn pretty quickly and so we're pretty nice here.

 

[chrispscott]

A little bit of history:

Pete McCarthy, an aeronautical engineer designed some fins using his knowledge and design facilities. He sold license to the design first to Apollo and then to Atomic. Both produced fins that were phenomenally effective. They had split blades. However, other fin manufacturers balked at paying to license his design so got on the splitfin bandwagon with their own designs. For example, Scubapro Twinjets sold very well but were phenomenally INeffective. Thus, the reputation of splitfins was destroyed.

Twin Jets were licensed from Nature's Wing the same as Atomic and Biofins were.

 

[NatureLVR]

How about Force Fins. Little split in the ends of those. Hideous looking and a point of riducule to some. To others (and rightly so) one of the best fins ever produced.

 

[tridacna]

How about Force Fins. Little split in the ends of those. Hideous looking and a point of riducule to some. To others (and rightly so) one of the best fins ever produced.

Did you mean Force Fin Foils? None of my 4 pairs of FFs have splits...

 

[NatureLVR]

Did you mean Force Fin Foils? None of my 4 pairs of FFs have splits...

Yes, have you tried the foils?

 

[MichaelMc]

I believe they mean just the normal V tail force fin "Little split in the ends of those".
Not sure I would call these hideous,

even if they no longer use the clear tan delta material.

(The older, weaker and black, version of these is what let me hold position or move against current while most others took shelter behind rock outcroppings; and the next dive was canceled because of it.)

They do make a split, I just have not heard much about it.