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Recommend manual air pump

V

Vlad

Well Known Member
Please recommend manual air pump or other means of inflation in the boonies. What are you guys and gals carrying in your tool box to inflate a mattress or replaced tube if there is no maintenance facility around? I am looking for something like this pump. Is it good for a camping trip?


manualairpump.jpg
 
Two very different devices to inflate a mattress or tire tube. A road bicycle pump is what we carry in the airplane for the airplane. It weighs ounces and I've pumped up a tire from scratch (in the hangar) many times. Ha, I'm going to tempt fate and announce here that in five, oh my goodness, going on six, years and 1200hrs we've never had a flat!!! Ever. I change tires and tubes early and often so as not to burden Tanya with solo mechanical issues far from home. I've often commented how Vlad would be happy to get his hands on these tires that we'll no longer fly with.

So, a road bike pump is perfect to carry in the airplane. CO2 cartridges I found just don't provide enough volume. I prefer a sure thing with human power in this case. Now I just need to go to the gym to be able to operate "the jack". :).
 
I had a flat

I got a flat on a tailwheel on a cessna C-180 skywagon at an austere airport.

First problem was getting the tail wheel up on a block of wood. It takes two people to lift the tail wheel off the ground - must be 350 lb or so.

Then after patching tube, had to find a bicycle pump. Lucky found one, I forget how - we might have flagged down a cyclist that happened by? I don't think so, I think it was sitting in a corner of someone's hangar that was open.

We probably wasted an hour walking the full length of the runway twice to where the hangars were to get that wheel pumped up. A small mini pump for a road bike would have had us on our way in minutes.
 
A road bicycle pump is what we carry in the airplane for the airplane. It weighs ounces and I've pumped up a tire from scratch (in the hangar) many times.
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Scott got a brand name for that pump?
 
The old trick for a tubeless tire calls for a lighter :)

I have used the small bicycle pump. Not fast but can achieve the necessary pressure. My suggestion is one that threads o to the valve stem. That way you can pump, rest, pump, repeat.
 
You don't need any particular brand of tire pump. Go to a bike store and get a high quality, full size model that works with Schrader valves. A built-in gauge is real nice. That is all I used for about my first 12 years of RV ownership. It is easy to transport and can serve for maintenance also although you might get a bit winded during tire rotations as you are doing the over inflate then deflate then inflate cycle. These tires are low volume and I have always thought that a compressor for inflation is big overkill.

That being said, I had to buy a compressor a while back for compression test purposes, and I do use it now for the tires. Wimpy, I know.
 
It really doesn't matter. Even a cheapie from wally world would probably work fine if you wanted to risk a pump failure :eek:
Lets see, Tanya just rolled in from her 12mi ride home from the office, and on her bike is something like this. The one in the airplane is quite a bit longer.

She bikes to work 12mi each way three times per week as long as it isn't raining and the temp is gt 37 and lt 109 deg F! Crazy I say. Only been run over by a car while IN the bike lane once!

The key for me on this kind of stuff is to really do/exercise the operation at least once per year in the hangar in the best of circumstances. Tanya gets annoyed with me sometimes when I decide we're going to do an unnecessary "drill" with tools. Go to Wal-Mart, or your local friendly bike shop and buy a simple pump. Then go to the airplane and let all the air out of a tire then pump it back up. Your arm will be tired, but your confidence and tube will be full and ready for the next flight.

Think you're going to change a mag or debug an electrical system with just what your carry on the road? Do it first in the hangar. Oh, yeah, there is that other little resource called community. I still haven't gotten used to that.

...back to my Monday beer...
 
I raced bikes for almost 50 years, so I have pumped my share of tires. As previously mentioned, CO2 cartridges are the easy way to go. If you get the 32 gram cartridges, 2 or 3 will bring an RV tire up to pressure. The downside to cartridges is if you patched a leak and it doesn't hold, you can blow(literally) through all your cartridges and be left with a tire that is still flat.

Blackburn and Avenir both make good bike pumps. A mini- pump will take forever to inflate a plane tire, but it can be done in an emergency. I would recommend a frame pump with a screw on coupling.

Actually I carry both CO2 cartridges and a bike pump in my -10 and on my bikes. Most of the time I can use CO2 to get underway quickly, but I have the pump to bail me out if it is a problem flat.

Jim Berry
RV-10
 
Don't forget that if you have a flat you'll have to jack up the wheel somehow and remove it. You'll need a jack as well as the other tools.

For an air mattress, while there are many kinds, the backpacking types such as Thermarest and other brands are easy to inflate without tools and are pretty comfortable.

Dave
 
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