Feedback on tank positioning.
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Another entry in this "diary", a couple of observations from the last weekend's dive with a couple further modifications.
1. Trying to get attachments on the deco bottle too close together seemed pretty counterproductive. The distance between the D-rings on my harness when donned is about 7-8 inches. I tried a variant with the bottom attachment on the bottle spaced out about this much from the tank neck attachment, and with 0-length bungee on both, and that just made things worse. The attachment points on the harness are not rigid enough for this to work. I think I may go back to Andy's suggestion and try 6'' bungee on the bottom, but instead of making attachments closer together and shorter, maybe I will experiment with rotating the lower attachment point.
2. The changes in the position of the bottoms of main tanks over the past couple of dives seemed to be resulting in disproportionate effects. On the last dive, I rotated attachments by maybe 0.5 inch towards the rails, and lengthened them by less than 0.5 inch, and the bottoms went all the way from floating up, to dropping beneath my knees, a lot. I'm not sure how much these changes are due to the minimal changes in the attachments, and how much "random noise" there is related to how much gas there's in the wing vs. in the drysuit, how I pack the drysuit pockets, how bungees drape around the regulators, how tightly I buckled the canister, etc. If I have to choose between the two evils, I think I'd rather have the bottoms angled up a bit as they were before.
3. I went down from 26-inch to 22-inch drysuit hose, since the hose was not snug against my body, but that seems a bit too short, and I think braided worked better than rubber. 24 inches would've been perfect, I think.
1. Trying to get attachments on the deco bottle too close together seemed pretty counterproductive. The distance between the D-rings on my harness when donned is about 7-8 inches. I tried a variant with the bottom attachment on the bottle spaced out about this much from the tank neck attachment, and with 0-length bungee on both, and that just made things worse. The attachment points on the harness are not rigid enough for this to work. I think I may go back to Andy's suggestion and try 6'' bungee on the bottom, but instead of making attachments closer together and shorter, maybe I will experiment with rotating the lower attachment point.
2. The changes in the position of the bottoms of main tanks over the past couple of dives seemed to be resulting in disproportionate effects. On the last dive, I rotated attachments by maybe 0.5 inch towards the rails, and lengthened them by less than 0.5 inch, and the bottoms went all the way from floating up, to dropping beneath my knees, a lot. I'm not sure how much these changes are due to the minimal changes in the attachments, and how much "random noise" there is related to how much gas there's in the wing vs. in the drysuit, how I pack the drysuit pockets, how bungees drape around the regulators, how tightly I buckled the canister, etc. If I have to choose between the two evils, I think I'd rather have the bottoms angled up a bit as they were before.
3. I went down from 26-inch to 22-inch drysuit hose, since the hose was not snug against my body, but that seems a bit too short, and I think braided worked better than rubber. 24 inches would've been perfect, I think.
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0 length lower attachment points, only adjust the location on the tanks, no need for long leashes. That half inch will pull them up to where they belong
Try to get everything out of your drysuit pockets, there is a reason I ordered mine without them.... They cause the tanks to a-frame and are a pita to get things in and out of if your tanks are positioned properly *most divers tank bottoms ride high preventing this from happening*.
Pictures are kind of sh!t, but it appears that your right bottle has the first stage angled the wrong way. You want the SPG slightly angled in towards your body, not out which is part of the SPG's draping wrong. On your drysuit hose, I typically use the standard length hoses and run them down then back up, it keeps the drysuit and long hose together on the turret. The top bungee on the long hose bottle should be as high up on the body as you can right at the crown to allow the drysuit hose to stay tucked in there. The lower bungee is as low as it needs to be for the long hose to stay attached. In the pics above at least with the tanks on dry land, it appears you aren't using the innertube to stow the hoses, so I would recommend doing that, scooting the dive rite elastic up until the edge of it is inline with the crown of the tank, and tucking the drysuit hose. Should keep everything nice and tidy.
Try to get everything out of your drysuit pockets, there is a reason I ordered mine without them.... They cause the tanks to a-frame and are a pita to get things in and out of if your tanks are positioned properly *most divers tank bottoms ride high preventing this from happening*.
Pictures are kind of sh!t, but it appears that your right bottle has the first stage angled the wrong way. You want the SPG slightly angled in towards your body, not out which is part of the SPG's draping wrong. On your drysuit hose, I typically use the standard length hoses and run them down then back up, it keeps the drysuit and long hose together on the turret. The top bungee on the long hose bottle should be as high up on the body as you can right at the crown to allow the drysuit hose to stay tucked in there. The lower bungee is as low as it needs to be for the long hose to stay attached. In the pics above at least with the tanks on dry land, it appears you aren't using the innertube to stow the hoses, so I would recommend doing that, scooting the dive rite elastic up until the edge of it is inline with the crown of the tank, and tucking the drysuit hose. Should keep everything nice and tidy.
Ozwald
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This thread has been awesome, kinda. Newly side mount convert here as well and I was looking for some answers but after reading this thread I now have more questions! Anyhow, rather than hijacking this thread I'll have to try some of the "little tricks" I read here first then start my own!
Back from a short break... trying yet another variant, this time with the deco bottle clipped on a 6-inch leash onto the rail, behind the main tank, since clipping it on the waist seemed like a bit of a dead end.
The good: the bottle is wonderfully trimmed against the main tank.
The bad: putting it on is very hard. I had to first clip it behind me, then let it dangle, lean forward and swing back and forth until I catch something, and then pull it out in front. Seemed pretty laborious, with everything being super tight. I didn't have time on today's dfive to play with taking it off and back on, so I don't know how hard or easy it is in the water. I can say though, that the recommended method of holding the bottle beneath my body, reaching with my left hand between the tank and the harness, and catching the clip, doesn't work for me. Maybe it works for someone with AL80s and longer bottom attachments, but my tanks are heavy and press against the side of my body pretty damn hard, it takes some force to peel them off.
The interesting: I realized the weight of the left side causes my harness to shift, so the left and right tanks don't trim the same, with the right bottoms floating up. Maybe it's just a matter of readjusting it during the dive, but seems like an extra burden to have to worry about.
The dangling canister seems to have something to do with the heater hose routing. It should thread through the harness below the bungee, not over.
The idea of holding drysuit hose with an EPDM band doesn't work a 26-inch hose, so far on two dives the band was consistently getting peeled off the tank. Probably the drysuit hose should be longer than the 26 inches for that sort of setup, at least for me.
The good: the bottle is wonderfully trimmed against the main tank.
The bad: putting it on is very hard. I had to first clip it behind me, then let it dangle, lean forward and swing back and forth until I catch something, and then pull it out in front. Seemed pretty laborious, with everything being super tight. I didn't have time on today's dfive to play with taking it off and back on, so I don't know how hard or easy it is in the water. I can say though, that the recommended method of holding the bottle beneath my body, reaching with my left hand between the tank and the harness, and catching the clip, doesn't work for me. Maybe it works for someone with AL80s and longer bottom attachments, but my tanks are heavy and press against the side of my body pretty damn hard, it takes some force to peel them off.
The interesting: I realized the weight of the left side causes my harness to shift, so the left and right tanks don't trim the same, with the right bottoms floating up. Maybe it's just a matter of readjusting it during the dive, but seems like an extra burden to have to worry about.
The dangling canister seems to have something to do with the heater hose routing. It should thread through the harness below the bungee, not over.
The idea of holding drysuit hose with an EPDM band doesn't work a 26-inch hose, so far on two dives the band was consistently getting peeled off the tank. Probably the drysuit hose should be longer than the 26 inches for that sort of setup, at least for me.
For anyone reading this thread, I would like to report that in my (arguably very limited) experience, while the waist-bound canister setup is cheapest (no new hardware needed when moving from backmount), it seems like a dead end, for a number of reasons:
1) Gets in the way of valve access. While on the left tank, I can easily reach, shutdown, and feather the valve with one hand while it's bungeed up, leaving my right hand free and while staying in trim, I can't do it with the right valve. I have to twist and turn like a caterpillar under a halogen lamp and use both hands, and still it's super uncomfortable. The canister, at least of the size I'm wearing, is an unmovable fixture on my waist that pins everything down and fights you if you try to pull the tank forward. And, if you move the canister more forward to leave some space, it then dangles and becomes the lowest point on the body.
2) Makes it hard to put the tank on. After I trimmed bottom attachments to 0-length, I found it pretty hard to clip the tank at the beginning of the dive. The canister forces the tank into a binary position, either in front of the canister while unbungeed, or all the way back while bungeed.
3) Contributes to crowding of the chest. With a heater cord, light cord, drysuit cord, bungee, neck clip, long hose, shoulder and chest strap all in the same place, it is a major cluster***k. The sequence, in which the hoses are laid on top of each other matters, and it's easy to make a mistake.
I will definitely be investing in another lid to move the canister down to my butt, and the waist placement doesn't seem to be fixable, or at least I couldn't get it to a point where it would work for me. Perhaps it works better for some people with a different rig, a smaller, thinner or shorter canister, or much more experience. I just found it to be a huge PITA.
1) Gets in the way of valve access. While on the left tank, I can easily reach, shutdown, and feather the valve with one hand while it's bungeed up, leaving my right hand free and while staying in trim, I can't do it with the right valve. I have to twist and turn like a caterpillar under a halogen lamp and use both hands, and still it's super uncomfortable. The canister, at least of the size I'm wearing, is an unmovable fixture on my waist that pins everything down and fights you if you try to pull the tank forward. And, if you move the canister more forward to leave some space, it then dangles and becomes the lowest point on the body.
2) Makes it hard to put the tank on. After I trimmed bottom attachments to 0-length, I found it pretty hard to clip the tank at the beginning of the dive. The canister forces the tank into a binary position, either in front of the canister while unbungeed, or all the way back while bungeed.
3) Contributes to crowding of the chest. With a heater cord, light cord, drysuit cord, bungee, neck clip, long hose, shoulder and chest strap all in the same place, it is a major cluster***k. The sequence, in which the hoses are laid on top of each other matters, and it's easy to make a mistake.
I will definitely be investing in another lid to move the canister down to my butt, and the waist placement doesn't seem to be fixable, or at least I couldn't get it to a point where it would work for me. Perhaps it works better for some people with a different rig, a smaller, thinner or shorter canister, or much more experience. I just found it to be a huge PITA.
Caveeagle
Contributor
Is there are good reason not to just put the light canister on the lower back parallel with your spine, so that the cord can run up and over your shoulder? maybe this is not optimal, but I don't see how this would be any more awkward that the perpendicular butt attachment that I commonly see. **my light has the switch on the lighthead, so reaching the can would not be an issue.
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his heater e/o cord is too short, and they aren't a DIY extension like a normal cable.
^^^ What T-bone said. Also, I hear that for some people, it sticks out too high up your body, especially in a rig like mine, I read someone damaging a canister this way. Since for me, a new lid is required, it costs me the same to mount it either way. I'm not so concerned about high in-water profile since I only dive OW wight now, but I'm not sure how it would work when I decide in future to top-mount some stages. My canister is pretty long, and in the small of my back perhaps it would interfere too much with the stages that are perpendicular to it. I imagine that on my butt, it will be less in the way since it will sit slightly lower (and the backs of the stages will probably float a little anyway).
Following on #55, in case anyone else is struggling with this, after some trial and error I found that the key to donning bottles on and off is to just get the main tanks off bungee. I have heard other suggestions and tried a few other ways, such as unclipping the back, clipping bottom first, etc., and I found them counterproductive. Especially unclipping the rear attachment seems pointless, since the tanks are so heavy, it is hard to keep them in the right position to navigate in-between boltsnaps on the rail (and now, I have 4 on each rail). I only strained my wrist in the process, firgting with heavy tanks for a while. With bungees off, there's no need to unclip anything at all. I guess in retrospect it seems obvious, but it wasn't obvious when I first tried, and I didn't come across much useful info anywhere, so I'm posting in case it helps someone else.
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