Lollipops or not?

[tbone1004]

Tom, are your transmitters hard mounted or do you use a 6” hose to the first stage?

hard mounted. They tuck between the first stage and the crown. If they were on hoses they'd be sloppy.
A lot of the rotational orientation of the bottles in sidemount diving is a function of how to get a hold of the SPG's and make them behave. I.e. if you run them down, you can't have the valve outlet down because the spg's sag. You can't have the valve outlet up with lollipops because it puts the SPG hose in line with our shoulder joint and it's uncomfortable etc. With the transmitters it is irrelevant. If they were on HP hoses though you'd still have sagging problems with valve outlet down, and if you had them clocked inwards the transmitters would be pressing against your body *which I find very uncomfortable with flag SPG's and the bulky transmitters would be that much worse.

I take The Great Dive Podcast's stance on my gear. "Don't touch my f*cking sh!t!" so I'm not worried about anyone snapping one off, especially since they're tucked in the nook between the first stage and the crown of the bottle

 

[decompression]

hard mounted. They tuck between the first stage and the crown. If they were on hoses they'd be sloppy.
A lot of the rotational orientation of the bottles in sidemount diving is a function of how to get a hold of the SPG's and make them behave. I.e. if you run them down, you can't have the valve outlet down because the spg's sag. You can't have the valve outlet up with lollipops because it puts the SPG hose in line with our shoulder joint and it's uncomfortable etc. With the transmitters it is irrelevant. If they were on HP hoses though you'd still have sagging problems with valve outlet down, and if you had them clocked inwards the transmitters would be pressing against your body *which I find very uncomfortable with flag SPG's and the bulky transmitters would be that much worse.

I take The Great Dive Podcast's stance on my gear. "Don't touch my f*cking sh!t!" so I'm not worried about anyone snapping one off, especially since they're tucked in the nook between the first stage and the crown of the bottle

Cheers, thanks

 

[vovanx]

Hi guys. I just wanted to ask whether you favour having your spg's up or down and if you have any reasons for this? Thanks.

tied the hose with the cable tie to prevent hose wear - you don't need to bend the hose to check the pressure as the SPG is always bent looking up:

 

[decompression]

tied the hose with the cable tie to prevent hose wear - you don't need to bend the hose to check the pressure as the SPG is always bent looking up:

View attachment 472642

you may want to use bungee or something else to secure the gauge as a drawback of routing this way is hose strain, its a good practice to allow the hose to straighten when not diving. Its a rare occurrence but doesn't take a lot of effort.

 

[soggybadger]

tied the hose with the cable tie to prevent hose wear - you don't need to bend the hose to check the pressure as the SPG is always bent looking up:

View attachment 472642

Pretty much the same as mine.thanks for the pic.

 

[soggybadger]

you may want to use bungee or something else to secure the gauge as a drawback of routing this way is hose strain, its a good practice to allow the hose to straighten when not diving. Its a rare occurrence but doesn't take a lot of effort.

I use bungee.

 

[vovanx]

its a good practice to allow the hose to straighten when not diving

But if the hose is always in one position, wouldn't it lower the overall hose wear? Rather than bending it before the dive and straightening after.

 

[decompression]

But if the hose is always in one position, wouldn't it lower the overall hose wear? Rather than bending it before the dive and straightening after.

You’d think, but historically having a sharp bend places stress on the connections as that’s where they tend to fail. It’s a best practice for quite sometime, less now with “flex” hoses becoming popular.