Side-mounting 2 different sizes (ex: 80cu & 40cu).

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Keep it simple.

It took me way more then 8 dives to teach myself Sidemount. I started by trying to figure it out with a plate as well. I get not wanting to invest until your sure. You will want to loosen your shoulder straps and tighten your crotch strap to lower the waist belt. Also for Sidemount you want it all to fit more snug. Your going to need something to put on top of the wing to keep it under control. I made a flat plate out of acrylic that mounted with the STA.

Now. I quickly realized this sucked, but it was enough to hook me on Sidemount. My first Sidemount rig I built from DECO Sidemount parts.


This is all you need for rigging. Use loop bungees.
View attachment 661858

1+ on the above.
I can't fault the OP for their approach - it pretty much follows my own path. HOWEVER, in retrospect, my advice is to START with sidemounting.com and then go from there. It is a miniscule money investment that will save lots of money and frustration later. Disclaimer: I have NO association with sidemounting.com except as a happy student.

Finally, to the OP, since you are a DIYer. Doing sidemount right does not have to be expensive. The harness is easy to DIY, the tank rigging the same. Go buy yourself the wing - or if you are really into DIY then look up my thread on how to make your own. Mine is over 5 years old and going strong.
 
Adding to my previous post: My first sidemount only harness was completely designed by me and worked OK for 2 80s. I was quite proud of designing a "better" sidemount system. I spent years "perfecting" it. I was even confidant enough to shore dive it in Bonaire, and boat dive it in Cozumel. When I took my first tech class (tech 40) I quickly realized it didn't scale up. Between tech 40 and tech 45 I subscribed to sidemount.com and completely relearned how to sidemount. I now realize my old system was a complete faf and a waist of time. I'm pretty sure I spent more money on small parts from the hardware store through the process then I ever did on my subscription to sidemount.com. If I had started there, I would have saved money.

I'm now a little embarrassed about these old pics (at least my trim is good):
View attachment 661879

1+ the above.
 
and remember

It has been designated, just as the sky is blue, and the grass green (except in England and
Australia) that there is to be absolutely no solid fixing on your tank in case of entanglement
 
Keep it simple.

It took me way more then 8 dives to teach myself Sidemount. I started by trying to figure it out with a plate as well. I get not wanting to invest until your sure. You will want to loosen your shoulder straps and tighten your crotch strap to lower the waist belt. Also for Sidemount you want it all to fit more snug. Your going to need something to put on top of the wing to keep it under control. I made a flat plate out of acrylic that mounted with the STA.

Now. I quickly realized this sucked, but it was enough to hook me on Sidemount. My first Sidemount rig I built from DECO Sidemount parts.


This is all you need for rigging. Use loop bungees.
View attachment 661858
Hah, I concluded my DIY was over-complicated and unimpressive after seeing your design & the other design that was 1 length of strap and 3 triglides. Simplicity is pretty much always better.

Adding to my previous post: My first sidemount only harness was completely designed by me and worked OK for 2 80s. I was quite proud of designing a "better" sidemount system. I spent years "perfecting" it. I was even confidant enough to shore dive it in Bonaire, and boat dive it in Cozumel. When I took my first tech class (tech 40) I quickly realized it didn't scale up. Between tech 40 and tech 45 I subscribed to sidemount.com and completely relearned how to sidemount. I now realize my old system was a complete faf and a waist of time. I'm pretty sure I spent more money on small parts from the hardware store through the process then I ever did on my subscription to sidemount.com. If I had started there, I would have saved money.

I'm now a little embarrassed about these old pics (at least my trim is good):
View attachment 661879
I already started working my way through the free classes on sidemounting.com, just to knock them out before I buy the subscription. I'm definitely signing up, no sense in wasting absurd amounts of time and frustration, when there's a lot of expertise available for about the same price as a short scuba-class. Not to mention, all of the other content you get outside of just side-mount.

Even his finning videos in the free section have me wanting to hit the water. There's a lot of info to absorb, so it will take me some time, but that's a good thing.

1+ on the above.
I can't fault the OP for their approach - it pretty much follows my own path. HOWEVER, in retrospect, my advice is to START with sidemounting.com and then go from there. It is a miniscule money investment that will save lots of money and frustration later. Disclaimer: I have NO association with sidemounting.com except as a happy student.

Finally, to the OP, since you are a DIYer. Doing sidemount right does not have to be expensive. The harness is easy to DIY, the tank rigging the same. Go buy yourself the wing - or if you are really into DIY then look up my thread on how to make your own. Mine is over 5 years old and going strong.

I'm definitely signing up for sidemounting.com, already started working through the free content.

For the harness, I saw something about getting two small pre-made plates, and the rest is just a matter of webbing, rings, etc. Although I haven't been able to find the shoulder-plate or lumbar plate he talks about.

How To Build Your Own DIY Custom Sidemount Harness %

I also found your tutorial, it looks simple enough, and I've added it to my notes. If I do that, I'll make sure to carry secondary floatation devices. That said, I'm also keeping my eye out on ebay to see if I can snag something like an XDeep Stealth 2.0

DIY wing tutorial - very picture heavy.

Anyway, before I blow more money on equipment, I'll want to make my way through some of the sidemounting.com videos.


and remember

It has been designated, just as the sky is blue, and the grass green (except in England and
Australia) that there is to be absolutely no solid fixing on your tank in case of entanglement
In other words, the tank must be detachable. That was a big part of what sold me on side-mount.
 
I tried the learn on my own approach after taking a sidemount course in gear I had no desire to use long term. I watched videos and eventually bought a xdeep tec2.0 rig which I set up by myself and tweeted until it seemed to work with my steel tanks at home. I do a lot of diving in Cozumel. I decided to add tank bands and weight pockets to the aluminum tanks here to get them to behave like my steel tanks at home.

When I got to Cozumel, a guy I know who tends to come off as full of himself, offered to help get me squared away in the pool before I used the rig in the ocean. He said the weight pocket approach was all wrong and I had a lot of things I needed to change. I argued with him even though he has probably 1,000 dives in sidemount here in Mexico. I told him I wanted to try it the way I had it and he said ok and told me he would check me out in the water and make minor tweaks to get me looking better in the water. He then spent two hours swimming all around me and moving stuff while I hovered at mid depth. When he got done I had never felt the rig work so well and feel so natural. When I got out of the water I discovered that in that two hours he had completely reconfigured my rig and the weight pockets were gone and the d rings were configured in the right locations and the bungees were perfect and the lower attachments were where they needed to be and everything just felt and looked perfect. Two hours that could have been 45 minutes if I hadn't argued with him until he had to trick me. 45 minutes to make my rig perfect because he knew what he was doing. After that people told me I looked like a pro in the water.

Spend your time and money however you want but finding the right person to help you might be the best hour you spend. I dive with someone else that went over to playa to spend 8 hours with someone that helped her with her new razor. After she came back I told her that her tanks didn't look right on her front d rings and one was off on the rear d ring and they were too low down on her body. I made some adjustments and after that she looked great and liked the way it fit better. I'm not a pro but I have spent 100 hours in the water with her and her old rig looked great and the new rig didn't but we made it look great after she got it home.

There is no substitute for working with someone that knows how to set up a sidemount rig and spends the time to do it. Good Luck.
 
I tried the learn on my own approach after taking a sidemount course in gear I had no desire to use long term. I watched videos and eventually bought a xdeep tec2.0 rig which I set up by myself and tweeted until it seemed to work with my steel tanks at home. I do a lot of diving in Cozumel. I decided to add tank bands and weight pockets to the aluminum tanks here to get them to behave like my steel tanks at home.

When I got to Cozumel, a guy I know who tends to come off as full of himself, offered to help get me squared away in the pool before I used the rig in the ocean. He said the weight pocket approach was all wrong and I had a lot of things I needed to change. I argued with him even though he has probably 1,000 dives in sidemount here in Mexico. I told him I wanted to try it the way I had it and he said ok and told me he would check me out in the water and make minor tweaks to get me looking better in the water. He then spent two hours swimming all around me and moving stuff while I hovered at mid depth. When he got done I had never felt the rig work so well and feel so natural. When I got out of the water I discovered that in that two hours he had completely reconfigured my rig and the weight pockets were gone and the d rings were configured in the right locations and the bungees were perfect and the lower attachments were where they needed to be and everything just felt and looked perfect. Two hours that could have been 45 minutes if I hadn't argued with him until he had to trick me. 45 minutes to make my rig perfect because he knew what he was doing. After that people told me I looked like a pro in the water.

Spend your time and money however you want but finding the right person to help you might be the best hour you spend. I dive with someone else that went over to playa to spend 8 hours with someone that helped her with her new razor. After she came back I told her that her tanks didn't look right on her front d rings and one was off on the rear d ring and they were too low down on her body. I made some adjustments and after that she looked great and liked the way it fit better. I'm not a pro but I have spent 100 hours in the water with her and her old rig looked great and the new rig didn't but we made it look great after she got it home.

There is no substitute for working with someone that knows how to set up a sidemount rig and spends the time to do it. Good Luck.

Thanks! Hopefully, I'm not coming across like I think I know what I'm doing (I don't) or turning down help. I have a scuba-class next week in another area, so it's not like I'm refusing that route.

If I happened to run into one of you guys who offered to assist, I'm sure I'd be more than happy to accept.
 
it also depends on your approach to it all - i had a a very rudimentary lesson ie hardly anything , and i spent the next 30 dives fiddling and reconfiguring it to how i liked it, and i quite enjoyed the learning process of doing that because it kept me entertained. As long as you keep watching and learning how others do it and adapt those thing to your rig its fine -jut enjoy the journey.
 
I want to reiterate that if it's your goal to dive with an AL80 and a 40cft bail out bottle, in OW, especially off a boat, then you will be much better served by using a backplate for the single AL80 and sling the bail out bottle. MUCH better. If you want to dive sidemount, that's an entirely different type of set up, and it's worth looking into, but you would want to learn that with two equal tanks, and understand that it's designed primarily for technical diving that requires full redundancy and much more gas than recreational diving.

Making your own sidemount harness wouldn't be too difficult in terms of DIY, but honestly I don't know if you'll save much money, depending on the type of hardware that you need to buy. You might do better finding a used xdeep stealth or razor, and just replacing the webbing and servicing the inflator.

I feel like many of the people on this thread are being helpful with regards to getting started in sidemount; after all, this is the sidemount forum. That's great, but from what you have mentioned as a goal, it's not the best solution for what you are trying. If it's also true that your dive experience is limited to 25-49 dives, why not just spend some more time diving a single tank and refining your set up and skills in that environment?

I have over 1000 dives, DM cert and experience, full cave, over 100 cave dives, and when I switched to sidemount I was surprised by the increase in complexity and task loading. I'm glad I took a class with a sidemount cave specialist; it made a huge difference. I doubt that I will dive caves in backmount (by choice, anyways) again. But for OW diving based on a single main tank and a pony or AL40? No way, I would use the backplate 100% of the time.
 
I just signed up on sidemounting.com! I'm currently going through their general courses first, because there are some other fundamentals (like kicks, weights, navigation, etc) that I should probably focus on first. I'll probably be 1.5 weeks before I actually try side-mount hands on, just because I have a scuba-class & want to actually work my way through a number of sidemounting.com videos first.

I want to reiterate that if it's your goal to dive with an AL80 and a 40cft bail out bottle, in OW, especially off a boat, then you will be much better served by using a backplate for the single AL80 and sling the bail out bottle. MUCH better. If you want to dive sidemount, that's an entirely different type of set up, and it's worth looking into, but you would want to learn that with two equal tanks, and understand that it's designed primarily for technical diving that requires full redundancy and much more gas than recreational diving.

Making your own sidemount harness wouldn't be too difficult in terms of DIY, but honestly I don't know if you'll save much money, depending on the type of hardware that you need to buy. You might do better finding a used xdeep stealth or razor, and just replacing the webbing and servicing the inflator.

I feel like many of the people on this thread are being helpful with regards to getting started in sidemount; after all, this is the sidemount forum. That's great, but from what you have mentioned as a goal, it's not the best solution for what you are trying. If it's also true that your dive experience is limited to 25-49 dives, why not just spend some more time diving a single tank and refining your set up and skills in that environment?

I have over 1000 dives, DM cert and experience, full cave, over 100 cave dives, and when I switched to sidemount I was surprised by the increase in complexity and task loading. I'm glad I took a class with a sidemount cave specialist; it made a huge difference. I doubt that I will dive caves in backmount (by choice, anyways) again. But for OW diving based on a single main tank and a pony or AL40? No way, I would use the backplate 100% of the time.
My goals have shifted since I originally created this topic, so now I have two independent goals: (1) learn side-mount properly and (2) always have a redundant air-source when solo. For (1) I agree, and will be running two equally-sized tanks. If I run two different sizes, I'll probably complicate my learning and/or learn wrong. For (2) a redundant air source is a matter of safety when solo-diving. For the moment, I'll rear-mount the main, and "side-mount" the pony.

I'm currently keeping an eye on the used-market for a xdeep stealth or similar side-mount.
 
For (2) a redundant air source is a matter of safety when solo-diving. For the moment, I'll rear-mount the main, and "side-mount" the pony.

You mean "sling" the pony. There's a real difference. The attachments are different, the positioning is different. The purpose is different.

I would be cautious about solo diving if your profile is correct and you only have 25-49 dives, maybe seek some training in that area. The whole premise of standard recreational OW diving is the buddy system, and carrying a pony does not solve all the problems that solo divers can face. Many new divers get pulled in the direction of carrying an emergency bottle, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with doing so, it is not the safety panacea that many think it is.

I'm sorry to harp on you, and I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but once you start talking about dive safety and solo diving, that's a different topic.

You can buy the pony, rig the sling, get some experience carrying an extra tank, all these things are fun and not a problem, but if it pushes you to do a dive that you would not do without the pony, that is a problem IMO for a new diver with no technical or solo training. That's just my opinion, give it whatever worth you want.

Here's something you actually asked for, instead of being called out. (Again, sorry about that)
This guy has a lot of specialty fittings and useful stuff:
Harness Accessories Piranha Dive Shop |
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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