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Ground Handling Equipment

This was a neat setup I saw one year at Sun N Fun

It was being used on an R-22 Robinson helicopter a fellow had there. All it was is a bottle jack mounted on 4 wheels with a long removable handle all of which is a pretty easy thing to make. The top of the bottle jack had a piece of pipe welded on top of it with a small spring loaded pin. When you jacked up the jack it attached its self to a mini trailer ball which was in reality a small trailer sway control ball that was mounted into the belly pan of the R-22. I don't know the makeup of an R-22 but I'm assuming that there's a cross brace on the forward landing gear that the ball was mounted to because the aluminum skin of the ship wouldn't be strong enough. To install one of these on our RotorWays we would have to drill a hole in the center of our forward landing gear to mount the ball and the ball itself would have to be on at least a six inch extension to get it below the tub of the ship. I think with the leverage put on the extension it would most likely end up tearing up the landing gear. Aside from that with the addition of the extension and bracing it would have to add at least a pound if not two lbs. of weight to the ship which wouldn't be good.