Versatile Sidemount Rig?

[karstdvr]

steel to steel attachment?
Not to be a DIR DIR DIR or so...

Your right it isn't DIR,but many,many,many years before DIR there were things that worked well,still work well. I might have an issue with a brass bolt snap,but large stainless steel swing gate carrabiners are fine. Besides,I know my knife will cut through webbing.

 

[Doppler]

steel to steel attachment?
Not to be a DIR DIR DIR or so...

As posted above; and to be fair, the metal to metal advisory pre-dates DIR by at a generation and was specifically suggested for boltsnaps because the older ones had a habit of corroding closed... NOW WE COULD TALK SUICIDE CLIPS... but that's a WHOLE other issue! LOL

 

[ffdiver]

When did side mount diving ever claim to be DIR?

And the silly UTD system doesn't count since its not really sidemount.

 

[Omisson]

I'm a fan of the new HOG and Hollis SMS 75 - both were designed with input from great cave divers. I use the 75 now but trained and spent most of my sidemount dive time on the Hollis SMS100D with Edd mods. Also a great kit but overkill for mexico (great for stage cave in Florida or Northeast Wreck diving...).

 

[Razorista]

@karstdvr
Looks very sophisticated.
I did not mean the clamp and attachment, though. I tried a less well constructed version of that on my Razor once, did not work for me.
It was either to loose or to hard to clip in and out and it sustained itself by eating gloves.

I am interested how you handle the tanks with those.
I never managed, but I know many people use that method longer than I even know sidemount so there has to be a way I do not understand.
Since the big boltsnaps are very good for handling I think I never grab any part of the tank itself excluding the valve and the boltsnap.

However:
The unique thought that got my interest and I never read anywhere before is that simple hip attachments (and when I think about that, many or most other simplistic ideas as well) are getting swamped by features in newer systems that make those look more fancy and feature-rich to become easier to promote commercially. It can be hard to sell something that looks easy and obvious to copy.
It now sound obvious to me and I think of it as a likely reason for many features and developments in sidemount rigs.

 

[karstdvr]

I am interested how you handle the tanks with those.

There really isn't a problem,and it is actually easier than using the plate/rail system. I have had the benefit of using both systems,and found what I use now to be much easier. One I place the carrabiner near the other attachment point,the gate opens on the carrabiner, and they are mated,then a simple matter of putting my tank neck bungee in place-done

The unique thought that got my interest and I never read anywhere before is that simple hip attachments (and when I think about that, many or most other simplistic ideas as well) are getting swamped by features in newer systems that make those look more fancy and feature-rich to become easier to promote commercially. It can be hard to sell something that looks easy and obvious to copy.
It now sound obvious to me and I think of it as a likely reason for many features and developments in sidemount rigs.

One has to look at the evolution of sidemounting in this country to understand the seeds of the commercial explosion. American sidemounting was developed by the Florida cave diving community with a group composed of Lamar Hires, Woody Jasper, Mark Long,Wes Skiles and Ron Simmons. They developed sidemount harnesses out of OW BCs and the side attachment point was used. Bill Rennaker who moved to Florida a little later moved to sidemount through his exploration,and he developed a metal plate with rails that would attach to the back of the OW BC. He had these manufactured and used these with his sidemount students,but also sold them to the community. The first commercial sidemount harness I saw was manufactured by Dive Rite and they used their successful Trans-Pac platform,but put a plate with something called "egg beaters" which allowed the direct hip connection with a carrabiner,in fact if I recall they sold this as a kit. Then somewhere along the way a soft backplate with rails was developed to attach to the Trans-Pac. Around this time the Armadillo was developed that had plate rails in the back,and this had some limited local commercial success. Sometime after this commercialization of sidemount occurred with everyone developing a harness system,but to date everyone I see is a copy of the plate/rails concept,so other methods have gotten buried by this commercial explosion. If one was to dig around into the evolution of sidemounting at its roots they would find some very interesting things that are tried and true,but never see the light because we are presently bound by what the manufacturers offer.