Tecline offers a variety of fins, all harking back to the dependable old JetFin style of technical fin, but for this first review, I thought I’d take the company’s Lightjet fins for a trial.
As with the masks, full review here, Tecline offers their fins in a selection of colourways, and for their Jetstreams, that means black, yellow, red and orange, whereas the PowerJets follow the Henry Ford mantra of ‘any colour as long as it is black’. The LightJets fall somewhere between the two, being available in white and black.
TECLINE LIGHTJET FINS AT FIRST GLANCE
At first glance, the Tecline LightJet fins look like the bastard child of a pair of Apeks RK3s and Hollis F1s, with a bit of old-school Scubapro JetFin thrown in for good measure. As far as a JetFin variant go, they are very easy on the eye, and I like the way that the foot pocket seamlessly merges with the three main vents and then forms the blade.
The Apeks-style hold in the tip of the fins allows for you to hang them up for storage or when they are drying after a dive, although during testing I did actually see people with fins with this hole arrangement walking down to the water’s edge with their fins dangling from a clip on a D-ring of their BCD.
The line of additional holes along the blade below the three main vents also help the LightJets stand out from the crowd.
I like the chunky stainless-steel spring strap, which is paired up with a rubber heel cover and incorporates a large thumb loop, which is easy to locate and grip even when you are wearing thick neoprene or drygloves, and at the end of a dive when you are dealing with cold hands. This made putting the fins on and taking them off very simple.
I found the foot pocket to be comfortable and supportive, regardless of what fin stroke I was doing.
As you’d expect from a broad, relatively stumpy fin such as these, they offer plenty of power. You could really motor giving a ‘normal’ flutter kick as the tip of the blade is very flexible and provides a great ‘snap back’, but they were also very efficient when frogkicking. When it came to manoeuvrability, they easily allowed me to back kick, helicopter turn, and make small adjustments as I moved about for photographs.
HOW MUCH DO THE TECLINE LIGHTJETS WEIGH?
However, it is when you pick up the LightJets that you realise why they have their name. They have to be one of the lightest JetFin-style fins I have ever used. A large LightJet barely tips the scales over 1kg. This means they are perfect for the travelling diver, as they won’t eat away at your precious luggage allowance as much as some of their weightier rivals.
The LightJets are made from TPV (Thermoplastic Vulcanisate), which is 100% recyclable, which is great news for when your fins eventually reach their end-of-life, though they appear to be very durable, so I’d imagine you would get many years of service out of them before that happened.
Where can these fins be purchased in USA?