Hangar Trolleys

MY Setup

My current hangar is 4m wide, 4m high and 13m long so the trike needs to go in sideways to be stored. I have quite a rough ground outside the door of my hangar, so wee castor wheels wouldn’t work.

Following the loan of a trolley (see further down page), then a friend (Thanks MARK 🙂 ) built this for me from angle iron and a set of wheels i purchased off the internet.  All in all is just over 12m of 40mm x 40mm box section and 3 wheels ( and 2 “L” shaped brackets per wheel)

I followed it up with a nice bright coat of Hammerite Red – looks brilliant 🙂

I just line up the trolley and blocks, and just push the trike on. I used to “drive” it on with the engine, but there was always a chance i could catch the prop and pushing it is really no hassle..

Pushing the trolley with the trike is a one handed job – again, it works very well, even over the rough concrete. It does have an occasional tendency to slightly track off as i’m pushing it in, but it’s easy to just straighten it up with a bit of wood as it goes in. For some reason it only does this on the rough concrete – as soon as it’s over the lip into the hangar it doesn’t do it and tracks straight.

I painted a guide line inside the hangar to keep it straight as it goes in.

Here is a link to the wheels i bought from Sinclair-Rush :  LINK

** I bought the wheels with the framwork/swivel attached, but eventually removed them and just used the wheels and spindle alone, so would probably suggest you look HERE if its of any use..

The Previous Trolley that was lent to me:

The trolley below was lent to me for a while from a fellow aviator, and was an excellent piece of kit.  My mate bought himself a QuickR, and unfortunately for me  he wanted the trolley back 🙂  so thats why i had to get the one above.

I  thought i would leave this  in to give others ideas from a different layout.

The theory is that trolley gets slid in from the side and lined up with the wheels.

One slight pull on the prop backwards about 6 inches and the trike is mounted. Very easy and literally takes 5 seconds.

Its not obvious, but the front plates under the wheels pivot and drop down at the front when the trike is off, creating built-in “ramps”.

Pulling the trike on lifts the plate up so it doesn’t drag along the ground when moving. Very simple, but very effective 😊

Front trolley wheel is fixed, as is the left hand wheel

The Right Hand one is steerable. This one has a clever car jack assembly to lift the whole assembly up to clear bumps. TBH I don’t need that and is probably overkill if you had a flat hangar.

Uses 10” Wheels

All made out of 70mm box section – very easy to move

Only the one wheel turns, which makes the whole thing very easy to control for me – especially on the rougher terrain outside the hangar with the 10″ wheels

Other Options

Looking at some other solutions – here are some i found and also provided by fellow “flexers” 🙂

These are meant for cars, but are a cheap alternative. At time of writing, these can be purchased for £55 a pair from HERE  but a search on ebay for “Dolly Skates” brings up some options.

Not sure they would be up to much, as you would need to jackup the back wheels to get the trike on them.

Front wheel would be easily put on though.

If you have money to burn 🙂 then you could consider an aircraft specific solution from AeroJack at an extortionate amount of £380 EACH

Link HERE