DIVER TESTS
WELL AND TRULY TESTED
DPVs can be relatively inexpensive and lightweight nowadays – which leaves the question of whether you really need one for your style of diving. STEVE WARREN tests a Spanish contender
DPV
DIVERTUG DT COMBI SHORT / LONG
UNTIL JUST A FEW DECADES AGO diver propulsion vehicles, or scooters, were a rare sight. Known mainly through movies and TV shows, even entry-level DPVs were fiendishly expensive.
In 1992 I bought one that in today’s terms cost £2500. I put it in the front of the dive shop where I was working. The requests to bring it to local dive-club pool nights flooded in, because it was an exotic piece of kit that people wanted to try.
For most leisure divers DPVs have limited value. Beyond its use as a marketing tool, I barely used mine in open water. I had turned to underwater photography and, because I wasn’t into drive-by shootings, the fast speed and long range of my machine were the antithesis of taking pictures that depend on stealth and the pace of a rheumatoid tortoise. It also weighed 20kg.
It’s different for tekkies. Technical diving has emerged largely from the development of equipment that permits longer, deeper dives, such as warmer suits, bigger cylinders and closedcircuit rebreathers.
With increasing depth, greater gas density and reduced exercise tolerances make breathing and swimming harder. DPVs are popular partly because they help to solve these constraints.
As a further benefit, lack of exertion greatly prolongs the sort of gas supply an open-circuit diver ploughs through on deep dives.
DPVs’ speed enables divers to cover more ground within limited bottom times and explore further into caves, or survey new dive-sites. They are sometimes also deployed as camera platforms, used in scientific diving for mapping and by documentary film-crews for shooting in current or carrying overhead light-arrays.
Divertug is a Spanish brand aimed primarily at technical divers. There are three models and a long-range DPV in development. All are tow scooters, whereby you hang onto the back to get pulled along, rather than ride-ons that you straddle.
The newest machine, the mid-range DT Combi, is a lightweight, compact unit and about as travelfriendly as serious scooters get. Relatively low cost, it provides a decent time/distance/power ratio.
Gibraltar SAC, which has long supported divEr Tests, has a cadre of technical divers. Its clubhouse lies close to the Atlantic and an impressive trail of deliberately sunk wrecks spread over several kilometres in the 10-30m range.
Scooters have radically changed how the club shore-dives. Of around a dozen members own, half are Divertugs. Made in Malaga, a two-hour drive away, this has helped them to win sales, because of ease of support and willingness to host local try-before-you-buy events.
GSAC committee officer, instructor and Divertug owner Robert Sherriff arranged for me to try the Combi.
The Design
The Combi branding relates to the unit’s two interchangeable lithium power-packs, contained in one of the two nose cones that give the Combi its Short or Long suffix.
The common rear unit contains the brushed electric motor, which is two-speed, and, externally, the prop and shroud, single handle and run lever, on/off switch, indicator lights and charging port.
The handle can be partly folded down to minimise the footprint for stowage when space is tight, as on a small boat.
The polycarbonate body is depth-rated to 130m. Switching between the smaller and larger lithium 24V batteries does not increase speed but does extend run-time and range.