Baggage compartment shelf ideas

One of the annoyances of the RV-9A is that there's not a lot of room to put stuff in the cockpit around the pilot(s), and things put on the floor of the baggage compartment are not reachable in flight. A remedy for that is the current project.

A ground rule for this project is not drilling any holes in the already flying, already painted airframe. The best solution, of course, would be to install a shelf during construction, a shelf that somebody else had already designed, engineered, and tested -- like maybe the mother ship, or one of the innovative aftermarket companies. (I'll volunteer to beta test...) (I've got the Almost RV-14 seat back modification, which my larger friends love, so the shelf design would ideally fit planes with and without this mod.)

Preliminary measurements indicate that the shelf should be about 17" above the floor of the baggage compartment. That's high enough to be reachable when sitting in the seat and low enough that things won't slide off and hit you in the back of the head in case of an untoward event. Stuff on the shelf would also be easier to load and unload than stuff on the baggage compartment floor. And in a perfect world, the shelf would be strong enough to carry the full weight allowance of the baggage compartment, so that you wouldn't have to remove it unless you needed the volume.

Another requirement is that the shelf not allow small stuff to slide off the edge and get lost. Lastly, the whole assembly has to be installable and removable from the airplane with minimal fuss, whatever that means. (I don't yet have the extended canopy rails installed, a task I'm unwilling to undertake myself with my spinal problems.)

The proposed "solution" is a shelf made of 1/4" plywood, reinforced with Home Depot Aircraft Supply aluminum extrusions around the perimeter with a cross piece for additional support down the middle. There will be a square tube leg at each corner, and a lightweight framework to keep the legs in place.

Not yet addressed are corner gussets for stiffness, and chafing protection so that the shelf unit doesn't wear on the airframe.

I did a search on this site for "shelf" and got an overwhelming number of "matches," sort of like the story of the leprechaun who tied a ribbon around every tree in the forest so that his gold could not be found.

As an aside, I heard an interesting story from an F-22 pilot about his eleven hour combat missions -- four hours to get to the combat zone, then two 90 minute combat sessions with a tanker between them, then four hours back home. The term they use for putting snacks, drinks, piddle packs, etc. in various places around the cockpit is "building a nest."

I need to finish an article I started for the KITPLANES magazine in which I describe a shelf I fabricated for my RV-6A baggage area. Similar to your idea, and includes a "map box". If you have a slider canopy, the shelf can be fabricated as a single piece of plywood stock. If you have a tip-up, then it requires two pieces and then joined together after installation.

I riveted an aluminum "U" channel to the lower baggage bulkhead...positioned to be on the same plane as the longerons. The shelf slides into the U channel and sits on the longerons and the seat back cross structure.

We?re implementing a modified (of course!) version of your idea but not loading the bulkhead. Plywood is cut, last 1/16? coming off for a good fit. Thanks for the ideas!

Ed_Wischmeyer said:

One of the annoyances of the RV-9A is that there's not a lot of room to put stuff in the cockpit around the pilot(s), and things put on the floor of the baggage compartment are not reachable in flight.

As an aside, I heard an interesting story from an F-22 pilot about his ten hour combat missions -- four hours to get to the combat zone, then two 90 minute combat sessions with a tanker between them, then four hours back home. The term they use for putting snacks, drinks, piddle packs, etc. in various places around the cockpit is "building a nest."

Click to expand...

In the airline world, we build nests too, usually checklists and charts to block the sun..

So it's almost done.

Very similar to what Noel suggested, I have a U-channel atop the longerons just forward of the lower baggage bulkhead, but it transfers no loads to the bulkhead. Rather, I have a screw through the U-channel, bulkhead and the upright in the center of the plane to carry vertical loads in the center, and on the edges, the U channel rests on the longerons. No, I'm not concerned about negative G loads. At least, I sure hope I don't need to be.

At the front, the plywood rests on the crossmember supporting the seat backs. And in the middle, I have a piece of hardware store angle that rests on the longerons and is yet to be glued to the plywood.

And although I haven't yet figured out how to support it so that I can reach it in flight, this design will allow a cutout or a slot for an oxygen bottle ahead of the rear bulkhead.

Materials: one piece of foam board to make a pattern (would have been nice if the foam board was big enough to cover more than just one side at a time), a 2' x 4' piece of 1/4" plywood, a 4' piece of 1/2" U channel, and a 4' piece of maybe 3/4 x 3/4 x 1/16" angle. And one screw, washers, and a nut.

Now for the real measure: four or five trips to the hardware store, one to Walmart for the foam board, and probably more time spent thinking about how to do it than on actually doing it. And when I returned the unused materials that supported all the aborted ideas, they totaled $82.10.

Pictures

Any photos?

Photos -- pretty good for a first try, but could do better next time!

Trying to share photos through google and don't have the incantation quite right yet...

snoop9erdog said:

Any photos?

Click to expand...

The foam board template, forward on the left, aft on the right. You only need to make one of these 'cuz you can flip it over for the other side. We cut off a bit more than we really needed to, I think, but there are places where we have a very tight, snug fit.



This cross brace gets attached to the bottom of the shelf. Even though we measured carefully, it's a little shorter that desired. Hint.



The center screw on the U channel on the aft bulkhead of the RV-9A. I wasn't brave enough to attach a nut plate in situ.



Almost all done. All that's left is to attach the bottom brace and put some finish on the wood.



Ah, leftovers. All those good things that were purchased for ideas that almost worked, so these items were almost used. Grateful for generous return policies...

Mine is very similar to the one above, but with no cross bracing. I put a small angel on the rear bulkhead and then put a thin coat of fiberglass on each side. It holds quite a lot.