UKH

Just seen a advert for these. Suitable for cracks up to 467mm. Kind of got me thinking it's kind of like a modified  builders Acro prop. Anyone used / got one. Obviously a piece of gear for special occasions.

A long-established piece of gear (though I have personally never used one.)

See e.g. https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/gear/trango_big_bro_protection-393758

I have a green one. They work and they do have some advantages over cams. The are light, robust  rack neatly and are surprisingly easy to place. But they can't be shoved up the crack as you go. But we wouldn't do that anyway would we, that's cheating

That’s not cheating, that’s top-roping 😜

Sadly not CE rated so can't be sold in the UK! Id be interested to know (Beardy Mike!) Why they might not be able to be rated?

I sell Trango in the UK and get lots of requests for them but sadly can't sell them! Tried using them once. Dropped it, belayer hated me.

I used to have a couple of the bigger ones before I lent them to a poster on here and he never returned them. 

The two sides of the crack need to be very parallel to get a secure placement, they're pretty shonky if it's flared much at all.  I guess that's less of a problem on the splitter granite cracks they were designed for (dunno, never climbed one), but I found in practice they were actually not nearly as useful on UK rock as I thought they would be.  I tried, quite a lot, to find good placements for them on gritstone in particular and very rarely did.

I would imagine they just don't have a large enough market to warrant the expense of certs. I mean lets face it, large cams are a very minor part of the market compared to mainstream, hence why the large sizes of Friends didn't get made. I'd imagine Trango probably have had their legs cut out from under them by large cam players like BD and DMM, and just can't see it being worth their while when they probably only sell a limited amount in the US...

I mean the other possibility is that there isn't a CE/UKAS certification which is applicable, but it is still counted as PPE so they just can't sell them because there is no certification to comply with...

I wondered about that. If they had bases on either end that rotated maybe they would sit better.

They actually sit fine. What you do is find either a dish or a knobble which one end sits in. Once extended you shimmy it about a bit to find a nice stable place and then do the lock ring up. Once the lock ring is done it might roc a bit but it's never coming out, a bit like a chockstone which is loose and moves but would never come out...

That might be a great idea, or possibly a terrible one. 
(I don't know, but I slightly suspect the latter!)

The faces are angled a bit and the idea is that it sits at a slight angle with the end that you clip into uppermost.  The ring isn't there to crank up and really compress it into the sides of the crack, the idea is mainly that the ring locks it securely to the length the spring takes it to and then it's the camming action that makes it hold as the load pulls the upper end down and torques it into the crack - not so much a miniature Acro prop, more a sort of adjustable hex.

Perhaps the difference between my experience of trying to use them (particularly on grit) and beardy mike's experience is simply my own incompetence.  I tried plenty of looking for a dish or knobble and lots of shimmying it about a bit - and the way I remember my experiences found I was completely with him up to and including "it might rock about a bit", just very much less confident on the "it's never coming out" part.

Mind you, I never did have the nerve to actually fall on one so perhaps it was just a lack of faith.

Maybe my confidence came from its better than not having anything 🤣 I mean hell I like tricams and offsets... 

Surely Trango will tell you why? I thought it was just that they hadn't submitted them because it wasn't commercial.

I can't remember the precise wording of the cam CE mark documents, I'd have to dig them out but there may well be something which makes it impossible for them to be tested according to that reg...

As a cam quite possibly. Would have thought you could rate it as a chock though.

Of course, I could just be suffering from bad memory on the whole thing. It's 5-odd years since I spoke to Trango.

That's possible...