Isn't that 'double' bungee problematic?
To be honest, the added clutter does bother me a little, but I can live with it, and without the second bungee, the deco bottles do not stay as snug against my chest as I would like. Below is how my bottles are rigged, and how they hang when taken off the second bungee. Making top attachment shorter than this means it's crushing my finger in a dry glove as I try to loop it through to manipulate the bottle. I use
the large ring bolt snaps from Extreme Exposure, these work the best for me. Given the length of the bolt snap, plus the size of the D-ring, I cannot see how it could be made more snug against the chest without adding the second bungee. Always grateful for suggestions, though. In my current setup, the second bungee serves to pull the front of the bottle a little towards my chest, as well as to pull it slightly backwards towards my legs (for that reason, I'm routing the second bungee behind the main tank valve).
I assume that you're bungeeing the primaries first.
Yes, here's my donning sequence (the doffing sequence is the opposite). I find it necessary to remove the main tank off bungee in order to put the lower bottle attachment on the rail or take it off, otherwise the tank is crushing my hand and I cannot manage to squeeze it through (it can be a function of my lower attachment on main tanks, which are 0-length right now). I seem to need the extra clearance.
- attach main tank bottom
- attach main tank top
- attach deco bottle bottom while main tank is off bungee (see below)
- attach deco bottle top
- put the main tank on bungee
- put the bottle on bungee
That'd mean the stages/deco would be bungeed over the top of the primaries.
Yes, that's what I'm doing.
If you then partially detached the primaries and swung them forwards, it'd create some twisting pressures on the stage/deco bungees. I'd predict it might push the bungee off the handles?
Possibly. The left deco bottle sometimes came off the bungee, I'm making 2-3 turns around the knob now. The right bottle is around the knob, but the knob is inwards, so it's secure. I'm replacing the valves with a pair of proper mirrored modular valves so that I can bungee around the post on both bottles. With the deco bottles it's a non-issue, because I'm working with a much longer and more stretchy bungee, and I have no difficulty looping it around or taking a couple turns. For some reason, I'm having a hard time doing the same with the main tank bungee.
Also, what is the issue with not getting loop bungess to work on a Contour? I've put loop bungees on every rig I own, or have trialled, thus far. I've never seen an issue, as long as you have some grommits or a D-ring at the back. It should be set-up so that the bungees runs hortizontal back to chest... but that's normally a factor of rig adjustment.
Not sure, that was a comment by Richard on
this recent thread I started. Perhaps the bulk of the drysuit with the heavy undergarments and weight of the tanks makes it an issue. I should probably call Edd, but then it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, it has to work for me. I suspect everything can be made to work with a better bungee, I just need to find one or otherwise tweak my rig to make it work. I'll keep poking around and trying different bungees recommended by others, and tweaking this and that.
All I can say so far is that, I've tried to extend the bungee that came with Contour to the max possible length by putting knots at the very ends of it (which added something like, 4 inches length compared to the length I normally use), and I spent a good 15 minutes in the water trying to wrap bungees around the posts (for what little I do have them on the damned HOG valves), with no luck.
Of course, one could argue it's a skill issue that shouldn't be remedied by tweaking equipment, and if there are special tricks to it, I'd love to learn them. Ultimately, I need to be able to operate the valves while bungeed and get the tanks off the bungee and back on in the water without difficulty.
I did ask a couple of divers using the same rig how they do it, and it seems everyone I talked to is just looping around the knob. Same for divers in all the videos I've seen people diving Contour (including the promotional ones).
On the photo (above) it's a little low... should be more snug under the armpits.
Bothers me too, but if bungees are much shorter, I can't work with them. Here's how my tanks are aligned right now (I know, there are still some danglies to eliminate, the safety cords are too long and the swivel on the O2 regulator is sticking out). The goal was to align tanks with my legs, rather than torso, to keep the tank bottoms from bumping against stuff.
Thoughts?