Sidemount_Stu
Contributor
Ok here's my photos. There are aspects of the Dave stage that are similar to Edd's.
First you take a piece of bungee and wrap it tightly around the neck. I was shown to take a quick link and put a knot in the bungee so it holds without pulling through the quicklink. Then place another quicklink(for clipping your reg) and the snapbolt style of your choice( I prefer butterflies) on the bungee. Wrap the bungee around the neck of the tank and run it back through the quicklink. Once you get it positioned, add a ziptie to keep the quicklink from moving. Up until this point it's similar to Edd's I believe. Now pull the loose end of the bungee so it's really tight around the neck and put a knot in it so that it stays tight. Being tight is important. If the bungee's too loose, the tank valve will have some play when clipped onto you. Here's photos illustrating up until this point
View attachment 195549 View attachment 195550
So at first when I was shown this I thought it would be weird in how you attach the top to your chest. It's really not at all. Once in the water it's totally comfortable. To clip the neck in you actually pull the butterfly back underneath and behind the valve handle. One point, this is a setup where your valve is facing down. Some people don't like that. Once on though you can easily see your valve and keep it out of muck. If you're scraping it, you're in some pretty tight stuff. So here's a photo of how the butterfly comes back for attaching to your chest d-ring. I was Edd-trained, so I have two chest d-rings. The lower where I clip off my primary and the upper where I clip off stage and deco gasses. It works just fine if you only have one d-ring and clip primary/deco/stage all to one.
View attachment 195551
The bottom attachment goes to your waist d-ring. It took me a few adjustments for proper d-rign positioning. If it's too far forward, your tank may hang too low. I have my d-ring right at the top of my hip bone. The bottom attachment is a snapbolt of your choice on a very short piece of bungee. Bungee is the critical part so it has some stretch to pull the tank in. I keep mine very short, although slightly longer is easier to grab. I like my stage pulled in really tight. In the photo, my bungee is actually longer than I would usually have it. If the bungees too long you may get a little tank hang. The attachment is basically at a 45 degree angle behing the valve (or just behind the handwheel). The wormdrive is 10 inches from the bottom. For me keeping the top and bottom attachments nice and tight are best.
View attachment 195552
For me the protocol is primary tanks on, stage on, then attach deco bottle which the leash goes between the stage and the primary to attach to the same waist d-ring as the stage. The deco bottle sits in the a shape created by the primary and stage.
*Photos courtesy of C & R Diving Unlimited, Inc- The official fill station and expedition logistics managers of the inventor of the Dave Stage
Sounds quite nice, a few mods i think i'd personally try (just personal preference) but i'd really like to see this configuration in action..... do you have any photo's or video of your stage/deco attached like this? Video showing the donning process in the water would be very useful too..... thanks for the comprehensive post!