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I dive off the New Jersey shore. One piece of emergency gear considered essential by many here is an emergency upline. Mine is a spool of about 250 feet of 1/8 inch braided nylon and a 50 pound open-bottom Carter lift bag. This equipment also has found application lifting stuff off the bottom. I have been using rubber bands cut from truck tire inner tube to hold the spool and lift bag to my doubles, the lift bag on one side and the spool on the other. I've never been entirely happy with this arrangement. The spool and lift bag are normally easy enough to reach and deploy, but I've already lost one lift bag and had a situation where the spool rotated halfway around my cylinder, almost out of reach. Some time ago I acquired a Halcyon Stealth Pack (the "pocket" the attaches to a backplate so it sits between the backplate & diver's back) and a Surf Mat (closed cell lift device). I have finally become frustrated enough with the way I'm currently stowing my upline and lift bag that I want to figure out how to set up the Halcyon gear. I'd like to hear from folks who have used this system. Mounting the Stealth Pack to the backplate seems simple enough. Halcyon supplied plastic screw-type fastners for the purpose. However, the heads of these fasteners will be pushed up against my wings, pinching the central (non-inflated) part of the wings against the cylinders, and holding the backplate itself off the doubles a little. Is this a problem? Should I use wire ties or cave line, or what? Then there's the Stealth Mat. There are a number of different ways to fold this thing so it fits into the Stealth Pack, but none of the ways I've tried seem entirely satisfactory. The mat has an overpressure relief/pull dump like the one on my wings. I'm worried about this being damaged, or having it press against my back causing discomfort. I wonder what the "right" folding method is, and how it should sit in the pocket. The mat has a length of 1-inch webbing with a small D-ring attached which I presume is intended to be used to extract the mat from the pocket. I don't like the idea of that thing flapping about - I think it has to be attached somewhere where I can reach it when necessary, but not so firmly attached as to make it difficult to disconnect one-handed. Any suggestions? I also wonder about interference from my crotch strap. Since the pocket is between me and the backplate, the mat will come out between me and my crotch strap. Has anyone on the list actually tried this? How easy is the mat to extract? What is the correct procedure? Finally, the mat is spec'ed at 30 pounds of lift. Is 30 pounds too small for that application? If it is, what is available that has sufficient lift and that will fit into the Stealth Pack? Then I get to ask how to fold it ..... Thanks! Art Greenberg artg@ec*.ne* -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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