streamlining deco bottles

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There's no good way of streamlining deco bottles AS IF they were SM tanks without a bungee. They need to be sidemounted to look like sidemount tanks. If there was an easier way, sidemount divers would be diving it that way all the time :D
 
You will need a bungee loop to bring the neck up into your armpit and you'll need 2 waist D-rings on each side. One as far back as you can position it for when the cylinder is full and negative and one toward the front about inline with the nipple for when the cylinder starts to get floaty so you can reposition the lower clip to hold it down.

Here's a photo of a sidemounted bailout cylinder with a backmounted rebreather. The bottom is a little higher than I like it to be but I was experimenting with some modifications I had made. You should be able to get the idea though. This was not done using standard stage kits but those would be easy to modify to make the cylinder hang like this.

IMG_4022.jpg
 

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Can you not do it like Pavao said by taking the slack out of the bottom bolt snap? Using the method he described, you loop the bottom snap back through the staging, so it holds tight to the cylinder, and then clip it off. If there's little slack against the cylinder, there should be little slack against the hip. I watched a UTD video on youtube showing just this setup a few days ago.

This doesn't preclude using a bungee to get the bottle up in your armpit where it's streamlined.
 
Not helpful, Steve. Plenty of folks sidemount with standard stage kit. Maybe use bungee or ring bungee. Look at 3 sidemount divers and you'll see 5 different methods.

None of the guys I sidemount with use "standard stage kits" and none use ring bungees... perhaps because they do not use "standard stage kits."

For more details, ask. Or simply visit websites, blogs, and perhaps Facebook pages of people who have been sidemounting for a while.
 
Can you not do it like Pavao said by taking the slack out of the bottom bolt snap? Using the method he described, you loop the bottom snap back through the staging, so it holds tight to the cylinder, and then clip it off. If there's little slack against the cylinder, there should be little slack against the hip. I watched a UTD video on youtube showing just this setup a few days ago.

This doesn't preclude using a bungee to get the bottle up in your armpit where it's streamlined.

Sure, it the attachment point on your harness is positioned for that. With AL80s you will have to move the clip from one location to another though as you breathe it down. AL80s start out negative and get positive fairly quickly. Clipping to a d ring on the front of the waist strap won't work when it's negative and clipping it to a d ring toward the back won't work when it's positive.
 
Can you not do it like Pavao said by taking the slack out of the bottom bolt snap?

No. There's always some slack. The bolt snap and the d-ring you clip it to provide a few inches of slack. That's enough to make it look ugly.
 
Good info guys, thank you. Will play with a few differant methods over the next couple weeks just to see if I can make anything work to my liking.
 
Sorry, the advice I gave was for stage/deco bottles, not sidemount, never done any sidemount diving, so can't offer any opinion on that.
I think once I saw post #2 I was thinking we were talking about gear configuration like on the picture.

this is what I thought the goal was, diver on the right...
Screen shot 2014-03-03 at 9.58.49 AM.jpg

The AL40...
Screen shot 2014-03-03 at 10.58.09 AM.jpg
 
You can attach the deco bottle to your BM tanks (between the two tanks) and run the 2nd stage under the manifold.....If your knees can handle the load.....

..wut...
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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