glider trailer top opening styles

On Thursday, November 20, 2014 8:04:06 AM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:

One of the biggest problems I've noticed is that the wing spars have to come out past the end of the tube trailer before you can lift them. That involves some combination of ramps, free-floating dollies, or back breaking lifting. The only time I've actually hurt my back assembling/disassembling a glider was helping a friend to stabilize an LS3 wing that was about to tip over.
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True, but unnecessary with a good design. The approach I would take is to use a captive wing root trailer dolly that allows the wing to swing like a gate away from the fuselage after it's been rolled off the trailer. Add a castering wing-tip dolly (think tail-dolly) and you wouldn't have to carry the tip. Add a one-man dolly which is attached to the wing after it's been swung out and you just have to release the root from its dolly and walk it to the fuselage without the sashay out past the rudder. A rig like this allowed me to rig a Twin Lark's massive wings solo in less than 10 minutes with zero lifting.
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In a Cobra/Komet, the dolly is captive in the trailer and the root of the spar is easily accessible to lift and start swinging the wing around. I'm sure a good design could be built for the tube trailer, but I haven't seen one yet.
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Yes, they're excellent designs and a joy to use but anything can be improved.

Bill D