Pony bottle sling?

Hello, everyone. I'm looking to build or purchase a comfortable sling for a 15cft contingency bottle to use with a rebreather. I know that many people advocate for larger pony bottles, but in this case, I am somewhat constrained by what the boat has.

Any advise on what to get?

DIY Rigging

Buy It

You will need to adjust to the smaller bottle size and also to your connection point on your rig.

Thank you, George. Very helpful.

Which rebreather are you using?

I use a Halcyon 40cf rigging strap with a a smaller s/steel jubilee clip. The length of the strap is perfect with an aluminum pony bottle and it is very light.

The Halcyon strap is easy enough to DIY if you have the time/inclination:

http://www.maggieowens.com/scuba/stage/

As an aside, if you have the choice, chose an aluminum pony. The steel ones are very negative and much harder to use.

Adam

Eric, I would strongly recommend that you use nothing smaller than 30 cu.ft. for you bail out for diving a rebreather. 19 cu.ft. is woefully inadequate for job unless you are in less than 33 feet of water, which in that case, your dil might be enough to get you to the surface.

As for sling systems for carrying off board gas, there are plenty to choose from Halcyon (which has been mentioned), Dive Rite, Oxycheq, Golem, Hollis, etc. In addition to the standard sling, I suggest also adding side mount bungee (used by cave divers using sidemount rigs instead of back mounted doubles) to hold the valve end of the tank up by your ribs, rather than have it drag in the dirt when you are in the water. There is plenty of discussions on this topic over at rebreatherworld.com.

Thanks, Walt. I'm not sure I'll have access to a 30 while I'm out; I may have to bring my own (which is never easy, these days).

One thing is good to keep in mind is that rebreathers gives you more bottom time without having to decompress, but when you bailout you are in open circuit, that changes your decompression obligation and maybe you need to decompress.

If you use a small bailout, you need to plan your diving as if you are diving with the equivalent nitrox in open circuit, in order to be able to go directly to surface on all time in the case of bailout.

Just my 2 cents.

I'd recommend using the DIY style rigging, though I've found it much more practical to replace the stainless steel band with a tank strap and camband. Doing this you can use almost any cylinder with the rigging and it's fairly light to travel with.

If I can't source the right size bailout cylinder, I'll usually just slap the rigging on a 80cf ally and deal with that. If doing shallow non-deco stuff, I'll just rely on my onboard dil as bailout (yes, I'm aware many say this is inadequate so please don't tell me how foolish I am).

I'd follow Eagle Ray's reco and use an s80. IMO 15cf is not enough even for shallow dives.