Glider Dolly

Does anyone know of a source for a simple dolly to roll a fully assembled glider (two place grob) in and out of a hangar.

Thanks,

Mark

The best I have seen is the one sold by, of all places, Sporty's Pilot Shop. They have a dolly built to move powered aircraft that is meant to be used three at a time. One on each wheel of a Cessna, for example. One of our club members has one to move his 1-26 around on. The dolly is built very low to the ground so that a glider rolls onto it easily. I think the cost was about $60 U.S. The dolly is robust and I'm fairly sure that one of these dollies will support a Grob.

An alternative is the automobile dollies sold as pairs by Northern Tool and Supply (formerly Northern Hydraulics). These dollies are rated to 1700 lbs each and will roll very well even on rough concrete or asphalt. The drawbacks are that a small ramp will be required to get a Grob up onto the dolly. With our Ka-7, we just lift the glider off the main wheel by picking up on the rear of the fuselage. I would only do this with a steel tube fuselage bird with a skid like the Ka-7.

Go to a hardware or on-line store and purchase a HEAVY DUTY furniture dolly. I have seen them in 3 sizes with varied caster wheels (3 per) that should hold the wieght of a GROB okay. As an alternative, you can purchase large castors at the store yourself and install them on a metal plate with the bottom of an old plastic bucket attached on top. Trim the old plastic bucket so only about 1' lip is above the bottom to hold the main wheel in place. You could also use some good quality 1' plywood...

Armand

Basic empty weight of Grob 103s could run between 800-900 pounds, plan accordingly.

TZ

A few years back, I welded up a pair of six-caster low-bed dollies for Air Sailing gliderport. Here's a .gif file of my working drawing:
http://www.hpaircraft.com/misc/dolly1.gif

The material was all 6' x 2' structural steel channel. The welded-on side flanges were made of the same channel cut in half.

In general, the dollies work just fine, and are still holding up well in regular service. Here are a couple of observations:

* As others have pointed out, it's handy to have the bed of the dolly extend out a bit to form an entry ramp.

* The welded gussets between the wheels weren't necessary, and I omitted them from the final product.

* What is necessary are stiffening ribs at each end of the bed. At the back, I just dammed the end of the channel with a 6' x 2' plate. At the front, I welded in a piece of 1' angle iron, open-end-down to form a chock.

* In service, the chock that I installed at the front of the bed isn't really adequate to keep the glider rolling out when the dolly encounters a pebble. It should be supplemented with another restraint, for example a removable rod that fits into notches in the bed extension that forms the ramp.

* The casters I chose were rated at 200 lbs each, so these six-wheelers are probably good for regular loadings of around 800 lbs.

One other thing - those dollies were my first experience with heavy-duty arc welding. I did them with my father-in-law's mondo stick welder on a spring day while wearing a T-shirt. The big lesson I learned there is that arc welding liberates copious amounts of UV light, and that UV can give you sunburn even when it doesn't come from the sun. Ouch.

'Course, if I'd ever in my life been to a tanning salon, I'd have know that already...

Bob K.