Ground Handling Dolly

Ahhhhh!  at last some thing to move the heli around on
without killing ourselves lol.

While we we at Homer Bell's in June, 2002, for his Fly In we bought this thing from Homer.  It had some issues but we bought it anyway. We got it home and completely reworked it. We would have been way ahead to toss it and build a completely new one but one thing led to another and we finally got it going on.  First thing we did was cut it apart to move the center beam to the center.  Next was to change the hinges so they were centered so the unit would pick up with equal lift on both sides.  Next we got rid if the hydraulic unit that jacked the rear up and down. It had no problem lifting the helicopter but it relied on a dog to maintain the heli off the ground and you couldn't have it a little lower or higher. If the dog didn't catch at the top the helicopter would just come right back down as soon as you released the button.  Then you had to raise it up while pulling a disconnect lever releasing the dog and then catch it by bumping the switch or it would come down robo fast.

Well that wasn't going get it so we ousted the unit and replaced it with the help of a friend with an electric screw drive actuator.  These things aren't cheap and we're lucky that we have a friend that sells them. He gave us a deal we couldn't refuse on it and we were off and running. We reworked the frame again moving the forward mount and totally redoing the rear one.  We attached it so it could start its stroke sitting on the ground and finish it with its maximum stroke lifting the unit as high as it would allow.  On the floor it worked great but with the weight of the helicopter on it things were way different.  For starters it lost some height because the frame would flex a bit but that wasn't a big deal. Next issue was it has a clutch built into it so when it reaches full stroke in either direction or its to heavy its allowed to slip.  At first it worked great but after a few times lifting the ship it began to have problems.  It would lift the ship up just fine and then when you went to lower it the clutch would begin slipping and it wouldn't come down until we relieved some weight from it with a jack.  We pondered the thing for a week or so afraid to disassemble the unit for fear of what would pop out of the thing lol.

After checking with everyone we knew and finding out no one really knew what was in there clutch wise we took it apart and found our problem.  This unit was designed to be used as a lift for a dump bed of a John Deere Gator and it seems good ole John Deere built in a safety factor in it.  You can't let the dump bed down when it is at gross weight.  It would pick it up but until all the weight was relieved the clutch would slip is what we surmise.

Anyhow be it right or be it wrong I fused the clutch together with some blade glue. Worst case scenario is the gear train can break and if it does the unit will freeze at the position it was at at the time. To protect the drive we came up with a cable system that activates a switch to cut the unit off just prior to reaching the end of its stroke and another switch to cut it off when it reaches it maximum down position.

For the front lift we used a corvette door glass motor to drive a screw jack so the front can be lifted independently of the rear. So far it works pretty good but we haven't at this date and time used it enough to find out. A stronger motor is in the future for sure and possibly reworking the frame once again to add another rail and tire in the front so it wont be so bouncy pulling it across bumpy terrain. Plus it could then straddle our tail boom support in our trailer so we wouldn't have to remove it to get the helicopter in and out of the trailer.  Someday we also plan on motorizing it so we wont have to do all the pushing and pulling lol.

We used our handy label maker to label the switches and battery meter.

April 26th 2003

Well we played with the clutch unit and all we did was make it worse. When we glued the clutch disks together it the unit wouldn't pick up the heli for some reason.

What we ended up doing was replacing the unit with another type. We used was a 3,000 pound capacity power trailer tongue jack.We had to cut the unit down to fit the mounts from our previous unit and this one seems to work great with no issues so far.

The rear one seems to work so well we went ahead and modified the front jack with a 2,500 pound unit from a different manufacture. It was alot more work to get going because of all the mods we had to do to it to adapt it to the jack and we had to come up with a different switch.

Both units have a port we can use to manually raise or lower the units in the event some thing tears up.

The next project for our ground handling unit

will be to motorize the front wheel so its self propelled like Donna's Hoover lol. We still got the Electric hydraulic pump unit we started out with and as soon as we can come up with a hydraulic motor to drive one of the tires and a way to regulate the speed of it well be working on that.