Hauling an RV-10 the Redneck Way

It's coming up on painting time, so it's time to take the RV-10 on the road.  Now, these pictures are pre-hauling, so I can't say it's going to work well, but it sure seems to be OK.  I never thought that hauling it would be such a chore to figure out.  You'd think you can just rent a car hauling trailer, but there are complications....

So, since I had a 102" x 10' snowmobile trailer, which just happens to be almost ideal for the size of the landing gear area of the plane, I thought I'd give it a shot.  You'll probably notice that there is one thing that doesn't meet some regulations....there are no lights on the tail that sticks way out the back off the trailer.  I plan to tie a red flag on the tail, which would make it legal if it was sticking out of your car (in Wisconsin).  I don't know if that holds true when you have something sticking off a trailer though.  I do have a couple good things going for me though....the paint booth is only 9 miles away, and I live in the country, on a straight-shot road into town.  So the chance that I'll have problems is minimal.

The complications come from the angle that you'd have to lift the plane at.  I found that if I tipped the tail to the ground, the nosewheel was not high enough off the ground to make it on the trailer.  So, I thought about ways to overcome this.  I decided that 2 sets of ramps would work.  By chance, because of a lumber shortage, I have 2 10' ramps and 3 8' ramps, which ends up being perfect.   The way it all works is that the rear wheels start up slowly first, and that keeps the tail from getting low.  Then after the mains are nicely on the first ramps, the nosewheel makes the bump up onto the center ramp.  I attached an old boat winch with a nylon strap to the trailer tongue, so I can crank it and my wife steers the towbar.  Then, after the nosewheel gets on the trailer, shortly after the mains make the bump and you can drag it the rest of the way.

There just happened to be a crossbar support right under the mains, so I drilled 2 holes in the deck on each side, and strapped the tires down to the deck with cam straps.  I'm going to use 2 per tire, since my straps are wimpy ones.   (redundancy is good anyway)  I also chocked the mains on both sides of the tires, and the straps hold them in tightly.  The nose gets winched tight.  That should be plenty to make the trip.  

Update 10/9/05:  Go to my Painting Time page

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