We all have opinions about the Trac3 - most of them unprintable (like the one about the vehicles we used to have where you couldn't close the rear doors if you had applied a Trac3!) Having been told - from Day1 - that I must NOT use the damn' thing unless I have positively identified a midshaft of femur fracture (and also not being gifted with X-ray vision), I have spent an entire career (as have many others) avoiding the thing like the plague, and using a Vac or Box Splint instead. This, of course, also leads to a lifetime of turning up at A&E with your next patient and having Sister point to the radiograph currently on the light box (which, of course, shows a classic, laterally displaced, midshaft of femur fracture) whilst smugly saying "You really should have used a traction splint on that, you know." The grinding sound is not crepitus - it is my teeth - because I know, equally well, that- were I ever to take the plunge and actually use the ruddy thing - my next lecture from Sister (at the light box once more) would inevitably be on the folly of electing to use (really, my dear!) a Trac3 on what was obviously a frac NOF. It's not just hindsight that gives you 20/20 vision - radiography does it too. So, once again, my congrats on using the thing in anger. Pity it didn't work ! (Do I get a prize if my guess that it was the ankle/foot strap that was missing proves correct?)