Moving fuselage to the hangar
TLDR
- Built make-shift ramp to load the fuselage to U-Haul truck
- Moved the fuselage from garage to the hangar
Detail
With the help of my friend Daniel, we moved the fuselage from my garage to the hanger this week.
Make shift ramp
After measuring the wheel to wheel distance and reading other’s posts, I decided a 26-ft truck from U-haul is the most accessible truck I can rent and it should fit the fuselage.
However, the u-haul loading dock only has a center ramp. I need a super wide ramp so the main landing gears can roll up to the dock.
I made a temporary ramp using the shipping crates for the airplane parts. I cut up the canopy crate’s lid into two parallel parts and added some 2x4 under it to provide strength. I think the wing crate would have worked better because it’s longer and provides a more gradual ramp. But the canopy crate lid was the longest flat wood I could found at the time.
Loading
The loading process is easier. The fuselage needed to go in tail first. Then we just made sure the wheel was going in perfectly straight.
The thing was super heavy even with wheels. We thought maybe we could put a ratchet strap on the tail and drag it up. But the moment we put on some force on the ratchet the tail ribs started to almost bend. We stopped doing that immediately and just muscled it into the truck with a few big pushes.
Unloading
Once we got to the hangar, unloading was tricker. Given that the ramp was pretty steep, we didn’t want to just roll it down uncontrolled. We were also afraid we wouldn’t be able to control its roll just using muscle power once it’s on the ramp.
So we decided to ratchet strap both sides of the fuselage on the wing spar placeholder plate, and released the ratchet strap inch by inch. This eventually lowered the nose wheel on the ground and the main wheel not far behind. Then we let go of the ratchet and let the fuselage rolled down the last few centimeters from the truck.
Here is a time lapse video showing the progress.
Aftermath
In retrospective, I think this would be much easier done as a 3-4 people job. We managed to pull it off with 2 people but it was really risky. We both underestimated the weight for the fuselage. If someone is reading this blog and decides to use home-made ramp and u-haul like I did, please consider having more than 1 person to help.
And additionally, I’ll admit I am not the best driver for 26-ft trucks. My mailbox took a blow when I was backing up the truck to the garage. So I spent one more trip to Ace Hardware to get quick dry cement and fix the mail post and reattach the mail box.
In the end, everyone was happy, including the mail box.
