Three/four concerns:
We are currently testing one with MSP on loan from the Coast Guard, so the one we had could have been overly stressed, but we noticed one of the retaining hooks that interlocks with the pin on the bottom kept slipping off. It looked to us like the hook portion may have been slightly bent. We just want to a make sure this may have been an anomaly with this specific litter and that even if it were to disengage, it would hold the patient’s load. We did not experience a failure while testing, but we only ran a few hoist operations with the litter.
The second (again possibly due to extensive use) issue were with the rail locks, we found they came undone several times (despite heavy hand tightening) possibly due to the vibrations while in the helicopter or possibly when hitting the door edge of the copter (no skids on the Dauphins). We were concerned there was no positive locking device to prevent the knurled nut (female end) from coming loose.
The third/fourth issues were with the patient retaining straps:
The very short webbing on the female side of the buckle on the patient retaining straps seemed to get trapped under the backboard almost every time we loaded the litter.
The straight, across the body strapping of the top strap in particular, seemed to ride up across the neck, we found we could “X” the top two straps and avoid the problem, but the straps are color coded so we were concerned untrained personal might not consider this modification.
We are going to contact the manufacturer to see if they can installed longer straps on the female side of the buckle and to color code the top two straps to indicate they should be fastened in an “X” pattern.
We were just trying to get some experiences from individuals who have used this litter to see if the issues above are really issues or not and how either by training, check list modifications, etc. we could overcome our concerns.
Pete
Previous Topic
Index
