Front View	Side View	Rear View

Technical Details

I acquired this Chinese descender from eBay seller dealparty360 in 2022.

This descender is 143 mm. tall, 22 mm. wide, 22 mm. thick, and weighs 190 g. It consists of a body and a control lever held together by a semi-tubular rivet that serves as an axle for the lever arm. The body is milled from aluminum alloy and then anodized. The body is 124 mm. tall, 38 mm. wide and 19 mm. thick. It has four well-rounded 12.7 mm. rope holes and a 7 mm. slot for the control lever. The lever is cut from 6 mm. aluminum alloy plate. It has a 19 mm. eye, a 10 mm. rope hole, and a small accessory hole at the end.

The front of the body is printed with "DOWN," "↓," "ROPE Ø8-9mm," "WLL 5kN," and "MBL 13.5kN."

Comments

This is a copy of the Sterling F4 emergency descender, although the body is somewhat wider, making this copy heavier than the original. It is designed for flexible 9 to 10 mm. ropes. With the proper rope, it works fine, but on PMI pit rope, I don't move. Try this on your preferred rope under your typical conditions before relying on it.

Rigging the descender requires having one end of the rope available. For an emergency descender that would be pre-rigged, this is reasonable. Users rappelling where rigging and derigging the descender is necessary should avoid choosing any of the devices on this pate.

The eye is slightly offset from the line of rope holes, so under load, this pulls the handle open. The user needs to squeeze the handle to descend. On a long drop, this can be tiring, but when trying to get out of the lower floor of a burning building, the effort is reasonable and acceptable.