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....
- You may not be able to rent one without electric brakes on your truck
- The width needs to be a full 8' minimum...car haulers with lowdecks are usually 83"..far too narrow
- It may be hard to find a trailer for rent in your area, or at least one that isn't overpriced
- You'd need a "deckover" (trailer with the deck above the wheels) to haul a plane this wide
- Deckover trailers are kind of high and when you tip the nose up the ramp, the tail may hit the ground
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