Sidemounting for fun VIDEO

[hambleto]

Great video! How was the flow down there? Last time I was at Devi'ls there was not even a boil over the ear.

 

[Mike Edmonston]

Cool video. Makes your profile wider but thinner an advantage in the cave? Easier to balance in OW?

Hi there Bubblehead,

Yes it was in the Ginnie ballroom, I didn't want to test new regs at the ear. The flow was pretty good, but I spent most of my time doing drills in the overhang. BTW, Dive Rite regulators don't breathe too bad upside down :11:

As far as buoyancy and trim goes, it is INSANELY easy, and comfortable. Even upside down with 1 tank disconnected and no mask. I prefer the streamlined profile of sidemount, but I don't necessarely use it to squeeze through a gopher hole

ALL MY DIVE BUDDIES use backmount doubles, so I use a 7 foot hose on my left tank. If I was with sidemounters only, I would use a shorter hose. If you guys ever want to try it out, I'm at Ginnie roughly twice a month. PM me.

Cheers

Mike

 

[TSandM]

ALL MY DIVE BUDDIES use backmount doubles, so I use a 7 foot hose on my left tank. If I was with sidemounters only, I would use a shorter hose.

Can you explain this, Mike? For the life of me, I can't figure out why diving with sidemount partners would change how you deal with your hoses. (I'm not a cave diver yet, so maybe it will be more obvious to me in the future.)

 

[Mike Edmonston]

Can you explain this, Mike? For the life of me, I can't figure out why diving with sidemount partners would change how you deal with your hoses. (I'm not a cave diver yet, so maybe it will be more obvious to me in the future.)

With another sidemounter, I can just swap tanks with him. then we can exit through restrictions without being tethered.

You just have to make DAMN sure that you managed your thirds correctly. It is still very unlikely that you would have a complete OOA situation on two completely independent systems (right tank and left tank).

Cheers.

Mike

 

[JimC]

Can you explain this, Mike? For the life of me, I can't figure out why diving with sidemount partners would change how you deal with your hoses.

There has to be two, neck o-ring or burst disk failures on the same diver to require an air share between two sidemount divers. I'm willing to live with that.

Beyond that, a long hose can be a pain in the *** on sidemount. If you look at the video it shows a relatively common method of stowing the thing on sidemount and as you can see, it creates a lot of chest clutter and dangles. Stowed on a tank removes that, but now you have to deal with bungees. Short hoses removes both issues and doesn't reduce safety. If there are two working tanks in the water and you have done your gas management properly both divers can get out using ether there working independent or swapping a bad regulator or worst case a whole tank.

From a gas redundancy point of view, a solo sidemount diver has the same options as a two or three man backmount team. They can each survive one catastrophic failure and get out, two results in fatalities. A two man sidemount team can survive two such failures and a three man team can survive three.

Quite simply another way to put it. Drying to dive 'DIR' hoses on sidemount is often a mess.

 

[Mike Edmonston]

There has to be two, neck o-ring or burst disk failures on the same diver to require an air share between two sidemount divers. I'm willing to live with that.

Beyond that, a long hose can be a pain in the *** on sidemount. If you look at the video it shows a relatively common method of stowing the thing on sidemount and as you can see, it creates a lot of chest clutter and dangles. Stowed on a tank removes that, but now you have to deal with bungees. Short hoses removes both issues and doesn't reduce safety. If there are two working tanks in the water and you have done your gas management properly both divers can get out using ether there working independent or swapping a bad regulator or worst case a whole tank.

From a gas redundancy point of view, a solo sidemount diver has the same options as a two or three man backmount team. They can each survive one catastrophic failure and get out, two results in fatalities. A two man sidemount team can survive two such failures and a three man team can survive three.

Very well put Jim.

May I add though, that I USUALLY use surgical tubing to tidy up my 7' hose so that I can wear it in a conventional 1/2 wrap around my neck. On the test dive, I inadvertantly left my surgical tubing in the car:shakehead , therefore I wrapped the hose around the cam strap. I normally do not dive it that way as it is harder to deploy.

Cheers.

Mike

 

[JimC]

(I'm not a cave diver yet, so maybe it will be more obvious to me in the future.)

Probably not. I don't think GUE Cave1 (assuming here) is going to expose you to the benefits (and issues) of independent sidemount diving with a dose of solo mentality mixed in.

Quite simply another way to put it. Drying to dive 'DIR' hoses on sidemount is often a mess. I started off like that. Shortly after crawling though my first real sidemount tunnels I realized that wrapping a hose around the back of your neck is not good as it catches everything. Having anything dangling off your chest digs troughs in the silt bed, lowering my already low 5 foot vis to even less. At one point, I looked down to see my necklaced backup had picked up its very own ball of muck and was full of shells and crud. That would be been useless to me if I needed it. I now park my regs on my shoulders where I can breath them clipped off and they don't drag or pickup mud. I also installed some screens into the bite down, because the idea of inhaling a razor sharp shell bit doesn't sound nice.

 

[loosebits]

I now park my regs on my shoulders where I can breath them clipped off and they don't drag or pickup mud.

Do you mean that you never unclip them or that you can get by without unclipping them? Having a hard time imagining how you could breath off them clipped off and at the same time they are stowed neat enough so they don't drag.

 

[JimC]

I can breath them clipped off in a pinch.. but its not much fun. (my avatar is out of date - it shows back when I used a necklace and whatnot)

They come off normally.