Rigging Bladder Wings on Apeks WSX-45

[Riles2226]

I am working on rigging a brand new Apeks WSX-45 and have run into a bit of a conundrum on how to rig the wings on the bladder. The Apeks site doesn't give much here. Here's what I've looked at so far:

1. Just stringing a bungee between the two side grommets, threading it underneath the spine strap but that seems like it'd flap around a bit.
2. Run a bungee from each side grommet to a D-ring on the waist. My concern here is that it'd get into the way of the bottom clip on my tanks.
3. Run a bungee between the two side grommets that would wrap around my waist, when diving. This seems like the most streamlined approach but it also seems like it'd be hard to get setup and would add one more thing in the way when diving.

For those that use or have used this rig, what do you do? What works and doesn't work?

 

[runsongas]

3 currently. have tried 2 before and it can sort of work depending on how you have your drings set up.

 

[Riles2226]

3 currently. have tried 2 before and it can sort of work depending on how you have your drings set up.

How do you like wrapping it around your waist? Why did you move from just attaching to D-Rings?

 

[runsongas]

i dive steel tanks so the drings have the wing set a bit further back than i like. wrapping it around the waist keeps it tighter to the body. i do wish the grommets were a bit higher up though.

 

[Riles2226]

I was playing around with idea #1 and think that might work. I've included a photo showing what it would look like. Other than maybe obstructing access to the dump valves, any thoughts on if/why this might not work?

 

[runsongas]

the sides on the wsx 45 would not be held as tight to the body. if you don't mind it, it will still work.

 

[Riles2226]

the sides on the wsx 45 would not be held as tight to the body. if you don't mind it, it will still work.

Thank you for the note. In the picture I included, the ideas wasn't even to run the sides even close to the body. The idea was to run the cord between the sides behind the backstrap.

With that said, I heard back from a guy at Apeks that dives the 45 and 25 and he said the intended design is to run a bungee from one wing to the other, looped in front of you, through the crotch strap. I tried it out and it actually felt pretty good so I'll be trying that out when I dive the kit this weekend and will see how it works.

 

[Riles2226]

As an update to anyone reading this thread, I've been out on a number of dives in the WSX-45 and really like the design of running the bladder wing bungee through the crotch strap.

For details on the setup: I ran one bungee through the left bladder grommet and knotted it off on both sides of the grommet so it stays in place. There's about 6" of loop sticking out of the grommet. I would have gone with a shorter loop but like having a longer loop to make it easy to grab when I'm gearing up in a thick suit. On the other side, I ran another loop through the right grommet and tied knots on both sides. On that loop is a smaller snap clip. Its long enough that, when I run it through the crotch strap and clip it to the left-side loop, it has a tiny bit of tension but not much. This setup has worked great!