Question about side mounted bail- outs

[tstormdiver]

Your diving a Prism right? So do I. I take some bungee and a quick link, connect it to top hole on the upper part of the plate, then I just put the loop around the whole valve & first stage. I use a tec plate which is attached to the bottom of my backplate. So if you think about the distance from tank valve to rail on plate, it is very short so cam strap on tank is higher. The other part is not having a long leash on the bolt snap and the bottle will then stay in tighter and not float up.

View attachment 170960 When done properly, you don't even see the bottle (alum 80)in a straight on shot!

View attachment 170961 Here is more of a side shot!
View attachment 170962

View attachment 170963View attachment 170964 Here is the Bungee I use

Here is the Tec Plate

Feel free to call me and discuss the mods I have done, maybe easier. Showed my rig to Nick Hollis and he thought it was pretty clean (even cleaner from when photos were taken).

If you are going down to cave country, go take a class with Ted McCoy at Light Monkey, he'll get you all straighten out with sidemount on the RB.

Yes, I am diving a Prism2. My configuration is nearly identical, except the butt plate & I use double ended clips on the bungee loops to make finding the bungee a little easier in dry gloves. I don't have a butt plate (yet). Right now I am utilizing a double sided set of d- rings that is woven into the butt area of my crotch strap (looks like a rectangle center piece of flat metal with slots for the straps & a D- ring welded on either end). Seems to work well for now. I will be getting a butt plate soon, but for now the double d-rings are working. That configuration does tuck the bottles away neatly & cleanly, yet easily accessible.

 

[Dive-aholic]

For aluminum cylinders you don't need a butt plate. Clip the tanks to D rings on the rear of your harness. When/if the pressure of the cylinders drops below 2500 psi, move the clips to D rings on the front of your harness. The bottoms of the AL80s will rise significantly with only 500 psi in them. To keep them trimmed out you want to have them forward clipped so they are held down and even with your torso.

 

[tstormdiver]

Thanks, Rob,... learning a lot here. I appreciate it.

 

[victorzamora]

I am only planning to see what my buoyancy will be at 500 psi in about 3-4 ft of water. I can easily stand up. I do not plan on conducting a dive like that. Just a quick weight check this weekend. I have a set of full 40's for the bailouts to used on the dives. I need to know what weight I will need, when I start my CCR Cave training this spring, so that I do not wind up pinned on the ceiling, as that could make a bad situation worse & make for a bad day. When you think about it,... How are Open Water students taught to be weighted? To be neutral with no air in their BC's/ wings & 500 psi in their cylinders at 15 ft.

For your buoyancy/weighting I agree. However, you don't HAVE to keep your tanks in perfect trim if something goes wrong. Adding forward d rings is the common method of trimming sm allu tanks. However, you empty your tanks on every sm dive. You're rarely emptying your BO tanks... so accommodating for that isn't as crucial. If you choose to, good. If not? Good. You might find the extra d rings get annoying for a rare event.

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[Wayne at DiveSeekers]

Victorzamora - Agreed! Rob, Sidemount is a little different on RB! Always have full bottles and never use them (except for B/O practice)!

 

[tstormdiver]

I can agree,... trim at empty probably not as absolutely important,.. However being properly weighted to avoid becoming pinned to the ceiling is also important in an overhead environment. Yes, it would be at the most a very rare event (hopefully never),... but one must also consider the "what if's" in that sort of environment.

 

[Dive-aholic]

For your buoyancy/weighting I agree. However, you don't HAVE to keep your tanks in perfect trim if something goes wrong. Adding forward d rings is the common method of trimming sm allu tanks. However, you empty your tanks on every sm dive. You're rarely emptying your BO tanks... so accommodating for that isn't as crucial. If you choose to, good. If not? Good. You might find the extra d rings get annoying for a rare event.

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I disagree, especially in regards to CCR Cave, which is where Tammy is headed. In an overhead environment those tanks need to remain trimmed. While you're rarely emptying your BO tanks, if at all, when the time comes that you end up doing that it would be nice to have everything else working for you rather than against you. I weight myself for empty tanks even though I rarely, if ever, get below 1800 psi. Why not just weight myself for 1800 psi? Because if I did that I'd be positive in that rare event when I have to dip into my emergency reserves.

---------- Post added November 14th, 2013 at 04:50 PM ----------

Victorzamora - Agreed! Rob, Sidemount is a little different on RB! Always have full bottles and never use them (except for B/O practice)!

Then why do we have bailout bottles if we've never going to use them?

I'm a firm believer in preparing for the worst scenario. That means training for the worse. I've yet to have to use my BO bottles but I would still like to be trimmed out if I should have to use them. That means being prepared to adjust as needed. Don't let Murphy take over the dive.

 

[Wayne at DiveSeekers]

Agreed Rob! I do actually practice OC Bailout and I do have a hip D-Ring on either side, just not too forward. I found that with very little leash on the tank and just moving forward a little bit to the side waist that the tank doesn't float up that much which is acceptable to me. All the cave diving that I currently do, I could do with back mounted doubles and in my config, even in worse case scenario, the B/O don't rise up even close to where a normal slung stage bottle would be. Here is a upper, side shot of me with a 40 that is not full. For this dive we calculated that we needed about 80cuft (furthest point/worst case) to exit so we actually ran to 40's which gave us great options for our team.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Thanks for the clarification Wayne! I didn't mean to imply you don't practice OC Bailout. I just wanted to clarify that statement.

Can you send me your process for determining OC bailout for cave dives Wayne? I'm researching this for an NACD standards update and trying to get as many opinions as I can.

chipoladivers@gmail.com

Here are some pics of AL80s being used for OC bailout.

 

[tstormdiver]

Learned a few things yesterday.
1. Don't just put a 500 psi AL cylinder in the water,... It floated away,.... Oopsie! Had to go chase it down,.... after I got my drysuit on. (got to keep a sense of humor).
2. To become neutrally buoyant in 3 ft of water, I needed 8 extra pounds of lead.
3. The overall trim of the cylinders really wasn't too bad,.... just need to tweak it a little to get it just right.

Thanks for all the advise guys! It helped out tremendously!
Afterwards I did an hour & a half dive to a maximum depth of 90 ft. Water on the bottom was about 48 degrees, towards the surface, was 60 degrees. Visibility was 50 ft vertically & 30 ft horizontally, until we got to the bottom, then it was about 3 ft. Good dive overall! Got a lot accomplished.