Gear Review: OMER BAT Fins
Posted By Sven Anderson on 23 August 2004
In the wake of some very enjoyable testing of Specialfins and Matrix products, I was contacted by Mark Labocetta at Technosport, the North American rep for Omer, to see what I was missing by not slipping into a pair of the BAT fins.
Happily, this coincided with the now-infamous Keyz Kraze hosted by several Deeper Blue members in a much sunnier and bluer-watered Key Largo than my normal digs here in northern California. New fins to try out in warm, clear water. I should have bought Lotto tickets.…
Like those of other freedive-specific manufacturers, the BAT’s are fabricated with the latest thing in fins that ironically has been going on for years: fiberglass composites. What distinguishes the BAT fins is the level of tech that was stunningly evident when I tore open the box.
These things deserved framing and placement on the wall.
The laminations were fault-free, an easy thing to do as the blades are semi-transparent with one or more of the inner laminates having a camouflage print that shows through to the finished surfaces. The finished surfaces were what was really nuts. The upper was a glass-like surface that promised to sheet the water from it, and upon turning them over, the bottoms resembled the technology once reserved for Formula One race cars. Omer spent some serious ducats in tooling these things- the bottoms are CNC-milled to exacting thickness depending on the flex desired. These were the 30 model, the more flexible of the range of 20, 30 and 40. The CNC router took an exacting thickness from the laminate in very studied fashion- someone did his homework- must have been a diver himself !
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