wing storage

[ttibc@msn.com]

Anyone hanging their wings for storage? How?

[alaskabearhawk]

I put about 18 inches of cable through some tubing for protection and made a loop that passed through the outboard aileron mount and the inboard flap mount. The loop is held together with a couple of cable clamps. I put in a simple pulley system in the ceiling of my shop, attaching one end of long rope to the cable loop, ran the other end up through a pulley securely attached to the ceiling truss and the rest came down and passed through a screw eye in the wall about 5 feet from the floor. This allows you to quickly stop the rope if needed and allows for a stop knot so the wing can't be lowered all the way to the floor. One pulley and rope setup per wing end for a total of four. Once the wing is securely hoisted in place, I have two straps per wing that act as a safety in case something goes wrong with the ceiling attach points. The strap is located on a nose rib and is protected by a piece of foam pipe insulation. I lower the wing to contact the safety strap to take tension off of the pulley. If you are careful, you can raise and lower the wings by yourself, but certainly not recommended. YMMV

[geraldmorrissey]

Thats slick, I have been mulling around different solutions. I'll be facing that same challenge this coming year. I have not fully grasped the size of these things yet but the spars are BIG. Thanks for sharing.
Gerry
Patrol #30

[JimParker256]

As an alternative to "hanging" the wings, you can put them on a padded wing rack. EAA published a nice set of plans for a wing rack. They work really well if you've got space in the shop (or hangar) to keep them tucked away along a wall... Here's a picture of an RV wing on the EAA rack. You can barely see them in that picture, but there are wheels on the corners for ease of moving them around. I used "locking" ones on mine so they would stay where I put them until I wanted to move them again.

[Nev]

Brilliant. Thanks Jim.

[Mark Goldberg]

Thanks for posting this Jim. I have been providing a sketch I made to customers. But this is much better instructions. FYI - Tony Bingelis was my local EAA tech counselor when I built my first two planes. Heck of a nice guy as well as a tremendous source of info. Mark

[svyolo]

3 or 4 inch wide straps are really cheap at HF and Tractor supply. A couple of loops around the skin overlaps, leading edge down. Pulleys, eyes, whatever to pull up in the air, and slightly against a wall. Mine are on a wheeled frame that I used to move them a few months ago. Same type of straps are suspending them.

[coosbo]

IMO the option Paul has outlined above is the best if you want to hang your wings. I wasn't willing to give up that much wall space and my shop celling is only 10' so I couldn't really hang them out away from the wall either. We hung mine up flat against the celling.

[alaskabearhawk]

That looks like a great option. I'm lucky that I have 12ft high walls. Rob Taylor first put up his wings like I did, I just copied his idea. BTW his son's shop has 14ft high walls, so real estate wasn't an issue.

[Bcone1381]

I am storing my wings using the Tony Bengelis wing racks that Jim references. The plan has them to built 63" long. The Patrol Wings are spars are 172", so I made two of them. If you make just one according to the plans, then almost 5' of wing is hanging off each end fo the rack.

[robcaldwell]

Since I would be transporting my wings back and forth between my garage, storage location, and the airport, I bought a cheap trailer from Harbor Freight and made a portable wing cradle that I used before and after I painted the wings.

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