Home made armadillo style side mounting

laurawood

Has anyone done this themselves? I have been experimenting with using bungee on the top of my ss back plate and positioning a 45degree ss ring butted upto where the waiststrap meets the back plate, rather than having the armadillo but plate. Still fiddling with this. Any lessons learned would be appreciated. Also has anyone tried side mounting steel 7 ltr side mount cylinders versus aluminimum ones? Is there much difference trim wise if mounted correctly on an armadillo style harness. I would rather get 2 x steel cylinders from a size & flexibility perspective. (I tried a single 10Ltr and that seemed fine - I have heard that steel 7s are more negative.)

Marc T

thats exactly what I do with usualy a 7 liters steel ( 7.7 kg without valve ) each side, the top has negative buoyancy especially with reg, the but of the tank is positive so very good for trim and very streamline config.

note that the distance between the tank valve ( fixed by the bunjee )and the cameband who hold the snaphook is always the same so you have quite the same setting ( and feeling ) from 2 Liters tank ( O2 for ex ) than a 20 liters.

Very nice config.

Cheers

Marc

seppu

hi
i used one dive a armadillo style rig.forget it.maybe you have carbon cylinders,works better.steel is to heavy.now i use a buttplate from narced@60 with d-rings on the bottom end,thats fine.my cylinders (ali 80cu) are not in the counterlung area,thats ok for me.
gruss sepp

Tautaz

For SM I use my cave harness and a dive webbing folded around that hold the wing, and allow me to carry more stuff on "hogartian style"

I clip the tanks bottom behind the legs.The neck are held in place by bungee under armpit



david

Outlaw

do you guys have any pictures to show? i need good ideas to copy

i have the armadillo, but have never really managed to fix the tanks right yet. i have to do some experiment dives.

Cheers.

Spyros

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RAL

I use a system that I made. For the bungees I cut a short piece of webbing & installed 5 grommets, 1 in the center two on the ends. The center hole is to mount to the rig using the same bolt that holds the upper wing. The bungees are threaded through the holes on the ends & knotted. You want the bungees to have just enough tension to pull the valves into your armpits. This is a shameless copy of the diverite set up.
I think you will have better luck moving the "D"rings off your waist belt. I made a butt plate out of webbing, grommits, bolts & "D"rings. Again I really just copied the size & shape of the diverite buttplate. I originally made this as a temperary setup, I got tired of taking my sidemount rig apart to use the bits & then having to put it all backtogether, but it has work out well so why change it?
As far as using 7ltr bottles.....I always get lost on what ltr bottle = what cf bottle. With this setup I have carried 50cf fabers, 66cf fabers & 85cf fabers,(all with"cave fills") they all trim out fine. It is a very flexable setup. If the dive could safely be done with 80ft of bailout then two aluminum 40s would be the ideal set up IMHO.

Regards
RAL

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Beanie

Yep just added some bungee to my back plate used the waist d rings

photos:
Outlaw Divers, Photos

Outlaw Divers, Full Size Photo

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ScubaDadMiami

Sorry for the poor picture, but this is how I have my rig set up: I have bungee through slots in the center of the back plate. That way, the cord is not from the end of the plate, which then requires it to be so short that it is hard to pull when you want to get at the tank.

At the end of the loops, where most people connect the loop to the valves, I installed "Packer rings" (since I am the inventor). These are just small stainless rings to which a standard deco bottle type clip attaches from the shoulder of the tank. I really like this since it will work with a much more widely used configuration of the tank. You can see the ring, the retrievel cord, and the bolt snap attaching the cord to the shoulder d-ring. (Note that I have moved the right shoulder strap over so that you can see the bungee loop coming from behing the plate.)

Attached Images

Sidemount.jpg (54.0 KB, 310 views)

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lof

You can clip a regular deco/bailout bottle with standard configuration (neck clip and bottom clip) into properly set up ArmadilloCCR. The bottom clip goes into the buttplate handle and the top clip attaches either to the UnderCounterlung D-ring or standrad chest D-ring, depending how tight you want it. It will still be way more streamlined that waits d-ring clip.

That's how I do it when I am lazy and do not care about total streamlining.

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seppu

same same! at the end of the day,total streamlining is only good for fishes.
gruss sepp