Trailer

Rotor Blade Supports

These were, to say the least, a pain to make and took up a couple of weeks to get finished.

We fabricated all this from scratch two weeks before leaving for Sun 'N Fun 2001. We first built them both stationary but when we tried to unload the helicopter the first time we had to literally drag it out by letting the front skids drag the floor on the way out for the main mast to clear the rear hanger.

That wasn't going to get so we motorized the rear unit so it would retract up to the ceiling.

It was alot of RnD time but we finally got it done and are pretty happy with the results we obtained. The electric actuators are very expensive so all we have done at the moment is the rear but one day in the future we plan on animating the front one to so that when were working on the heli in the trailer we won't have to be so careful not to bump the trailing edges of the rotor blades on the front hanger. The rear actuator is from a Sears riding lawnmower. It was used to raise and lower the mowing deck and we obtained it from a neighbor of ours who was kind enough to donate it to the cause.

April 5th 2005

We finally got around to redoing the front blade hanger and while we were at it we installed another electric actuator.

The actuator doesn't quite have enough stroke to it to make it go up to the ceiling like the rear one does but it's alot better then it was.

END