Here is a technique I use when climbing SRT with 16 strand 1/2" poly kernmantle, specifically NE Rope safety blue. I use a pair of LH RH toothed Petzl ascenders with the two foot loops. I practiced this 3 ft off the ground and I didn't take it high until I could do it six times without mistakes.

The changeover:

1)Boots out of the loops, unload cam for lower foot loops and remove from line.

2) Attach Fig 8 descender to line. Verify that it is oriented correctly should you need to softlock it.

3)Attach carabiner to your center ring in front of your existing clipped in hardware (closest to you) and clip in the descender.

4)Take a big pear carabiner and attach to your right (or left depending on your descender and line orientation) side D ring.

5)Form a Munter hitch in your line and clip into the carabiner on your side D.

6)Grab your line below the Munter hitch and pull upward, tilting your body to allow as much rope as possible to pass thru from above you thru the Munter hitch. If you do this properly, the Munter hitch should come back thru the biner and reverse when you let go of the line, and assume the proper orientation for descending. It's possible to get hung up if you don't do this now. Don't wait till your full descent weight is on it to get the knot to reverse.

7) Clip your lower Petzl that attaches to your boot loops back into the line. ABOVE the Fig 8 descender. This is SO important. If you mistakenly clip in below it could jam up against the Fig 8. Clip it in close to the Fig 8, just above. If you do get it wrong, you can fix it by re-attaching the top ascender, then footlocking the rope and pulling it down.

8)Put your boots back in the loops. Using the line, and not the descender strap, pull yourself up as you stand. Now all your weight is on the lower Petzl, and with one hand steadying yourself holding the line, unload the cam and remove the top ascender.

9) IMPORTANT TECHNIQUE - Before you let go of the line and let your weight settle onto the descender, grab the running end of your line below the Munter hitch and pull it upward and hold it. This keeps you from descending and ending up with your heels over your head, all crunched up in the Petzl lower half. Take your feet out of the boot straps.

10) Now, you will prbably find that between both friction rigs, the Fig 8 and the Munter, you won't go anywhere if you take your hand off your line. So at this point, I take a moment to unwind the Petzl straps out of my center ring and climbing line and let it hand off to the side where it will not entangle with anything else.

11) Hand feed your line up into the Munter, and you will descend a little bit for each length you feed in. If you have bare hands don't let your fingers get nipped by the Munter. That's it. I keep my legs straight out and my toes up and use the descent as an opportunity to stretch my calf muscles.

It is possible that if you use a rope other than what I use, it may slip thru more easily, but I find that I move hardly at all unless I feed the line into the Munter.

Sorry - one type. When I connect the Fig 8 descender to my center floating ring, I'm pretty sure it's on the far side of the ring, farthest away from me. The point here is not to have the newly attached carabiner and descender bind up in the other hardware.

dude 5, i hated the prospect of changeover until i started using an ultrascender with a gri gri. here is my attempt to describe a confusing procedure.

While climbing, I have my ultrascender first.

Below that, my second attachment is my gri gri, teathered to my harness with a strap and a foot or two of slack. The gri gri is also attached to my dangeling foot loops.

The rope coming out of the gri gri then goes back up to a pulley on my ascender.

Now, when I pull the tail of my rope, my feet go up. I stand, push up my ascender, sit and repeat.

This might not be the most efficient climbing _style_, but the changeover is very nice.

First, with the tension on my ascender, I attach the gri gri directly to my harness. I then pull the tail end and suddenly, all my weight is on the gri gri. Unclip my ascender and down i go.

This is extremely smooth and allows me to quickly reconnect to climb if I want.

Are you guys using two hand ascenders on your described SRT method?
It looks like you are describing a single hand (left) Ascender and a pulley tied below it similar to the RAD/Yo-yo system posted on the New Tribe Web site. (Tengu Tips Area).

I used to have the same problems in the SRT switch over until Peter told me what I was doing wrong and now it is so natural that I can do it without any stress or extra gear. ( I use the Gri-gri instead of a figure-8 for descending). I have two ( Left and Right CMI Ultracender) Ascenders that are used for SRT without any pulleys involved.
I gave up using the Fig-8 because it does not lock up like the Gri-gri and because it twists the rope too much with every descend.