double wide trailer

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:48:32 -0700, Tony wrote:

I'm having trouble visualizing what you typed. Perhaps its just too
early. The fuselage is ~20-22 ft long. Each wing is about 18 or 19 ft
long.

Tony,

On those measurements what I was thinking wouldn't work. I thought your
fuselage was quite a bit shorter than the wings, which isn't the case.

I have a box trailer for my Libelle with the wings taking up the full
trailer length except for about a foot at the rear. The fuselage is in
the back of the trailer with the rear of the rudder just inside the door.
Each wing is 8m long including spar stubs, while the fuselage is only
6.2m, so I've got around 2m (6'6") going begging in front of the fuselage
where my tow-out gear, trestles and spare wheel live. And there is still
a lot of spare cubic in there.

I've got a friend with a Duster and because of its massive fixed center
section the solution for his trailer was to lay the wings flat on the
floor. I'm wondering if maybe a good solution for the double Cherokee
trailer would be two racks for the 4 wings on the floor. one wing would
go root first the other tip first. then the fuselages in, one nose
first the other tail first.

I see what you're saying, which would leave a parallel-sides space
between the wing racks. The thing I wondered about is how far apart would
the fuselages have to be so the wing stubs on the rear-facing one would
pass the fin of the forward facing one when you were getting it out. Same
problem applies to the other end and other stubs and fin of course.

Being a model builder, I'd probably make reasonably accurate models of
the wings, tails and fuselages out of, say, white foam, so you could
experiment with balsa sticks to make supports and see not only how the
fit them close together but if you can still get them in and out. I have
a feeling that might be the hardest part.

FWIW my trailer seems to have been designed by packing the Libelle bits
into the smallest possible arrangement and then leaving 3 inches all
round. It goes into and comes out of the trailer OK but care is needed.
Its very tight inside there and I'm bent double moving the wings, which
fit tip-forward, between their root spar supports and a dolly. This
operation would be pretty much impossible without a thick plastic pad to
rest the root leading edge on while getting inside to lift the spars onto
or off their tiedown rack. The moral of this is, if you're building an
end-loading box trailer, be sure to leave more than the absolute minimum
of free space or you'll curse yourself in future.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Here is a strange idea.

Picture a basic flatbed trailer. Add the left and right walls, hinged at
the bottom and outside of the floor to fold from the normal up and down
position to horizontal and beside the floor. Drive a fuselage onto each
side, secure them in jigs, winch the sides back to up and down like normal.
Wings secured in jigs between them. Front and back and top stationary with
smaller access doors.
--
Jim in NC