BlackTip Travel

I've been diving the Blacktip since early October and have about 40 hours of dive time on it. I was a bit skeptical about the button trigger at first too. Its a thumb trigger and the double tap for go single tap for slow is actually pretty easy to get used to. The trigger design also takes care of the potential problem of the trigger getting stuck. It has a two way design that allows the diver to push it back out manually if it were to get stuck. This trigger design also makes it easy to switch hands while scootering which I have found to be a useful feature. You are able to grip the trigger return lever with your left hand to keep the trigger pulled in while you let go with your right hand. That way if you need to make any adjustments to gear or use your right hand while scootering you don't need to come to a stop to do so. The speed migrate feature is also really nice in this situation. If you are pulling one of those clever hand switching moves and your finger slips off the trigger you aren't left clicking away on the trigger to work it back up to the speed you were just in. As long as you get back on the trigger within five seconds you are right back in the gear you were in before you went all butterfingers.
The Safestart has also proved to be a useful feature. I have actually had to replace a wrist seal on my drysuit before because I tossed my Piranha in the back of the truck and forgot to lock the trigger. Halfway down the road I hit a bump and the prop engaged. Before I was able to stop it was halfway through devouring the sleeve on my brand new drysuit. With the Blacktip the double pulse to start trigger makes this scenario less likely but I have had one accidental start on it so far. I dropped my fins into the bin on top of the BlackTip and they somehow hit the trigger, bounced and hit the trigger again in a perfectly timed manner to start the scooter. Thats when the Safestart kicked in. It just spins at a fraction of its power and torque until you shut it off or it encounters any resistance on the blades. Basically, If its in air and someone starts it up by accident, you can safely shove the body part of your choosing into the blades and experience little more than a gentle massage.
The trim and buoyancy will vary a bit based on the batteries you use so it will require a certain amount of tweaking to get it dialed in the way you like after you select your batteries. With Dewalt 9ah and 12ah batteries if you weight it to be neutral the tail will hang down if you nose clip it. I found a simple solution to this is adding a clip point to the tail of the scooter. I have found that for most diving in open water this single point tail clip is the most useful configuration. I clip it to my hip D-Ring and the nose floats up behind me and I can swim around and take pictures or look at stuff and I don't even feel the BlacTip sitting there. When I am carrying the BlackTip as a backup scooter I tail clip it to my hip and nose clip it to my shoulder and it rides like a sidemount tank. Very streamlined and out of the way.
With 5 or 6ah batteries I was able to get it pretty close to trim by adding weight to the nose. I have primarily been diving it with 9 or 12ah batteries however so a lot of my tweaking has been toward that configuration. The nice thing is with the new towcord style it completely negates any trim issues while scootering. The clip is anchored on the towcord (though still adjustable) and it acts as a central lock point and doesn't allow the scooters trim to try and take it nose up while underway.
As I talked about in the interview this scooter is TOUGH! I have owned Yamaha and SeaDoo scooters before and they seem to break if you look at them funny. The Blacktip just,,, bounces. I was climbing out of the water with it on a steep rocky beach. Pretty much a solid shelf of granite rock stair stepping from the water steeply upward about 6 feet to the beach. I pushed the scooter up in front of me and thought it was balanced on the top of the cliff but it took a swan dive as I was climbing up after it. I don't know how but it seemed to hit ABSOLUTELY every sharp pointed boulder on its way down before it did a neat backflip and landed in the ocean. I went in after it while rehearsing the eulogy I was going to have to recite to Dive Xtras as to why I killed their baby. And it was,, totally fine! I couldn't believe it. I had shattered my Seadoo scooters housing a few years ago when it tipped over in the parking lot and this thing just took a flying leap off a cliff onto the rocks with hardly a scratch. I dove that scooter past 200 feet after that without an issue. I buried it in the sand and then dove it just to see what would happen. I drove it through sand and gravel and kelp at full speed without a hiccup. I tried to tangle the prop up but, just like with the XProp on the Piranha it just brushes everything aside and refuses to get wrapped up. I fed cave line into it and manually wrapped it around the prop to finally get it to jamb. Then I just pulled on the end and spun it out. The closed prop hub doesn't give entanglements anywhere to get stuck. At one point when I was dive bombing the kelp beds I picked up a rock the size of a grapefruit. It jammed into the prop shroud and the X-Prop blades beat the hell out of it before I stopped and pulled it out. No broken blades, hardly any damage visible at all. I baked the Blacktip in a sauna at 140 degrees and then jumped into a 42 degree ocean and dove it. I have tried to simulate the extremes of every real world scenario I could think of with this scooter and I cant seem to make it quit.
The BlackTip is not going to replace the major tec scooters on the market right now. It is not all things to all people but if you are looking for a backup scooter to tow along or leave halfway down the line in a cave. Or a scooter that you can toss at your buddy who just showed up with dead batteries in his DPV. Or a loaner that you can use to introduce a friend to the awesome world of possibilities that scooters open up for divers. Or if you are a diver who has never even considered getting a scooter before because of the prohibitively high price and you want to experience the freedom and limitless potential to expand your diving adventures. The BlackTip is absolutely what I would recommend looking into.