As you point out below, so much of this is guesswork but ... I have found that the less the film is in contact with whatever supports it, the lower the risk of drag. Plastic reels have high ridges along the spiral groove that film sits in. The Nikor reels, in particular, have good spacing between wind layers and a relatively low support profile.
This likely would work just fine assuming the tank is large enough to accommodate 2 stacked reels. I use 1/2 gal Kodak rubber tanks so the inverted funnel trick suggests itself.
I suspect that's why he's getting such flat contrast. I do an initial 2min continuous agitation which - again - seems to help resist drag and to kick of a process that gives me good mid-tone contrast. I hold that as a constant. I fiddle contrast by varying two things: Switching from Stand to EMA and/or changing developer dilution.
This inability to precisely predict what causes drag is what made me do such extensive testing. When I found what worked, I stuck with it. There are almost certainly other dev/time/agitation/suspension techniques that would work as well. That's why I keep saying - no one should try semistand or EMA unless they're willing to put some time into honing the technique for themselves. So many people here (and elsewhere) try it casually, never bother to do the work, and then complain that it doesn't work. This is a fiddly technique to squeeze the last little bit out of certain kinds of scenes (see Post #22). The good news is that once you get this dialed it, it's highly repeatable.
