I posted a photo of my regs on a dive board on FB one time asking if there were any DH divers in my area (the Philippines). Luckily enough, I received a response from Bernard whose father used DH regs in the mid fifties. He even had a whole stash of NOS Broxton parts from his dad.
Here’s a pic of his dad et al, as well as a copy of the text.
“The beginning —-
Scuba diving in Cebu City in the early 50s started with very spartan diving gear. A bare tank with only a skimpy harness of webbed belting fastened with “D” rings as body straps. The top of this tank was fitted with a “K” valve which used Teflon washers as a high pressure seat. Attached to this valve was a double hose regulator which always filled up with water when the mouthpiece was dislodged. You have to roll over to your left side and blow the water out. The other hose on the right side supplies the air on demand. If you do not have enough air to blow the water out, just roll over on your back then you will get a free flow of air to fill your needs. The narrow oval mask, the " Squale Mask " does not have the modern day nose well, so you just push your mask upward to seal your nose with the bottom skirts in order to clear your ears. We did not have snorkels then, so when we ran out of air (we did not have submersible pressure gauge then), we just swam up and used the “frog-kick” to swim to the shore out the nearest banca boat. They called us “frog-men” didn’t they?
Hector Veloso, prominent sportsman picked up his first scuba diving set in the US Divers store when they first opened up shop in California USA in 1954. He brought this set to Carcar, Cebu on a picnic outing hosted by a mutual friend, Nene Racoma of the Mancao clan at the beach resort in Barrio Toyom. Hector and I took turns at familiarizing with this new toy complete with imported spear guns, the French “Arbalete”. As there were no other takers we both enjoyed our first experience in scuba diving while the rest shared in the eating of our fish catch.
From then on, it was diving trips to Danao, Cebu where Hector bought a beach lot and built a beach house just for the diving. Rene Weingarner a Swiss manager of F. E. Zuellig Co. followed suit by taking up diving and also bought another beach lot nearby and diving parties were a regular event. Donald Wood, an American from Mobile Oil Company and Mr. Nelson, another American from The Goodyear Tire Co. caught on with this new craze. These new diving buddies were also drinking buddies so the Cebu Divers International set up headquarters at Eddie’s Log Cabin and has nightly meetings. During the rounds of drinking were also tales of fish catch specially the ones that got away that got bigger and bigger in proportion to the amount of spirits imbibed. Here at Eddie’s Log Cabin is where we plan our next diving expeditions to different islets on long weekends as in this old photograph at Balicasag island hosted by Tanciong Lim a prominent businessman and sportsman from Tagbilaran, Bohol, an owner of a technical school as well.”