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Moving Wings and Empennage

kdedmunds

Active Member
I need to move completed wings and Empennage for an RV 14 about 300 miles. I have a 17' by 6' by 6' enclosed trailer. Any advice on making the move safe and sound?
 
I have moved my plane many times. Your trailer is plenty big. You can either get foam mattress pads and set the wings on them or put foam under and around them and tie them to the walls of the trailer. Spongy foam or bubble pack will give them good protection. Solid foam 1" thick from HD between parts will protect them. The parts are really stronger than you think.

Do NOT get the foil covered foam. One time I wrapped some parts in foil bubble wrap and I spent many hours buffing off the foil marks.
 
Hang the wings

I moved an RV8 Project 500+ miles and we hung the wings on the sides of the trailer leading edge down. A few bits of advice: We used 4 ratchet straps per wing section, and that was fine, but make sure to put something between the straps and the wings for the entire chord of the wing - wall side and inside! Don't let the strap contact the wing anywhere and don't count on your padding staying where you put it just because you want it to; duct tape it! You can't possibly have too much padding: carpet remnants or carpet padding, bedding comforters, etc. Those foam pool "noodles" are cheap padding.
The other thing is to make sure the wings hang down from one of the high wooden strakes; don't let the straps compress the fragile trailing edge or distort the wing skins and for sure don't let the metal ratchet buckles be near the wing. To keep the wings from bouncing around, use one more set of straps per wing (yes, a total of 10 straps) to go around one of the lowest wooden strakes and up to one of the upper straps as it comes around the leading edge to pull the wing down and towards the wall.
Once the wings are secured, the rest is a piece of cake, you'll have the whole floor open.
 
You can always use a couple of rolls of insulation to wrap the wings in. When you are finished you can donate it to Habitat for Humanity.
 
When I moved from Atlanta to Houston, my wings were still in pieces but the empennage was complete. I built fixtures for the vertical and horizontal tail so I could easily get them in the back of the moving van with all my other belongings. I stopped short of making full covered crates mainly because it would have been a fair bit more complicated to build, and I felt the fixtures would be fine...which they were. I suspect this might be overkill for your move though, since it sounds like the airplane parts are all you'll be moving in the trailer.

LU8p48D.jpg
 
I delivered my RV-12 (via U-Haul enclosed truck) from Texas to northern Iowa. I rented 12-dozen moving blankets from U-Haul, for some ridiculously low price...I think it was like $50 total for the blankets. 12-dozen was overkill, but for the price, why not? I made the long trip and everything arrived just perfectly. I wrapped the parts in blankets, and also had them laying on padded beds of blankets too. Worked fantastic.

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