Question Bail-out bottles not alligned. Why?

[Tracy]

Yeah...he's made some questionable decisions though.

Lots of them. Soooo many. You guys barely even make the list.

 

[GF99/99]

In many photos and videos of (experienced/professional) divers diving with bail-out bottles, I see those bottles out of line with the rest of the body. They hang more or less diagonally on the side of the diver.

In sidemount - where divers also have their (primary) bottles on the side - it is always said that these bottles should be in line (parallel) to the torso.

My question is: is this different with bail-out bottles? If so, why?

This only seems to be relevant with divers that use chest or back-mount rebreathers or double tank sets.

Depends on what kind of diving your doing and what works for you and your diving team. I am assuming your referring to open water CC bail outs key word there being Open Water (obviously restrictive overhead diving is a different story) there really is no point in sidemouting your your bail outs. I use to do it because I thought it looked "cool" but if you just setup your rigging correctly and use a trim weight on high He mixes it makes life alot easier to kit up and also for handing off B/O to support divers. When you start trading tanks with support divers having sidemount setup tanks can end up being a PIA unless everyone is running the exact same sidemount rigging setup.

If you setup your rigging correctly your B/O tanks can still sit nice (yeah there not perfectly parallel like cave sidemount diving) for open water diving. Below is a picture of my B/O tanks, no bungees, no sidmount rings, no shocker bungees for the top clip, nothing fancy, just regular super simple old school stage rigging; 2 clips and some cord plus a trim weight on the top trimix B/O to tame the tail since it was 77% He.

Feel free to criticize my B/O rigging but for Open Water diving it is the simplest and works best for me and my teammates (and we all run the same setup) Sometimes better to just run with the KISS mentality.

 

[Cheizz]

No criticism, just wondered.