pyromedic

The main concern, as I see it, with fibreglass tubes is the fact that the fibreglass is degraded by sunlight.

At what point do they become too weak? There is no practical way of testing for this. At least when using paper you can see when the tube starts to degrade.

The fragments of tube are only one part of the safety issue. If the tube is part of a rack and it lets go...boom! then the whole rack can be affected (See Kimboltons recent accident).

Many people?s heart attacks last for hours, just because you are having a heart attack it does not mean your heat stops pumping blood round the body. In the majority of cases (early on when the victim does not know he/she has a heart condition) they liken it to f*ck off bad heart burn/indigestion, it often passes within 30mins or so for mild cases. The heart sorts it self out eventually, but this is the place for the NG spray, it stops it immediately. It is, contrary to popular believe, quite rare for someone to go, "ughh", grip their chest and keel over dead. There are millions of people that suffer from myocardial infarctions, but cardiac arrest, although more likely for people who have a history of angina, caused by ventricular fibrillation is rare compared to the number of mild heart attacks.

Terminology:- Myocardial Infarction, The blockage of an artery in the heart that leads to oxygen starvation of a part of the heart muscle and eventually death of that part of the muscle, approx 4-6 hours time duration. Depending on where the blockage occurs, this can affect up to 70% of the heart muscle from 1 blockage, if this is not rectified quickly the heart will not be able to function and will stop (cardiac arrest)



Figures show that 1 in 5 people that have a true heart attack will go into cardiac arrest and die if not treated!!!!


Speaking from the standpoint of a paramedic who deals with these matters daily. If this man was having a true Myocardial Infarction (MI) also known as a heart attack, GTN or any nitrocellulose base would not help. I have attended to people who have used whole bottles of GTN spray to try to alleviate the symptoms. GTN only alleviates the syptoms of mild to moderate angina. The only way to help is a combination of anticoagulant therapy (heparin or warfarin) and thrombolytic (Streptocarnase or Tenecteplase). This stops further clotting (anticoagulant) and breaks up the clot that has already formed (thrombolytic). These are the treatments used in the UK by paramedics in the patients house or back of ambulance before they reach hospital. Just to let you know on cost Heparin -approx 45p per dose Tenecteplase ?493 per dose!!!!

All the professional tubes that I use have a wooden plug at least 2" thick screwed from the outside in with fairly heavy screws. I don't have anything as small as 1" but i presume a 2" length of 1" dowel would do the job of plugging the tube. For setting up we use a length of builders rebar banged securely into the ground at the correct angle with a piece of 3/4" ply for the tube to rest on. The tube being lashed to this to stop any movement. This serves 2 purposes... It stops your tube being buried as you fire. I think some bloke called Newton gabbled on about acions having equal and opposite reactions.
Secondly it reduces the amount of dampness that your tube will absorb from the ground.
Not sure I like the idea if a tube just being supported with 4 bricks. If the tube were to blow for any reason, your nice soft (reasonably) card would be intermingled with the occasional half brick CHAZ. Enough to really upset your day!!!

Also you need someting with a posative fixing to the tube ie screws or nails. As a rammed plug on card or plastic tubes will come loose fairly quickly as the tube does expand a fraction as the shell is fired. Alot of time could be wasted re-ramming tubes after every firing