Saturday 12/7/24 was yet another wet and rainy day up here in the upper left hand quadrant of the country. While that is always depressing on a Saturday, it worked out OK today as it allowed me to do other things.
The apron outside my hangar has a slight incline from the hangar floor to the taxiway. It isn't too big a problem and I have been managing it for over 10 years, but a funny thing keeps happening. It seems that every year the airplane gets a little heavier and it takes a little more grunting to get it up that small grade.
Frequently I push on the cross bar right behind the front seat as it is an easy place to grab and easier to push. The problem with that is that to turn it I push on the longeron at the back of the rear seat. I don't think this causes any problems, but it doesn't seem like the best place to push.
The other way of doing it is to push from the tail using the tow bar. I added some additional spacers to the axle nut so there would be enough material for the tow bar to grab and not slip off.
As you can see from the image above, the tow bar doesn't work that well for pushing as the geometry is all wrong and the force is going more down than forward. That is why this method requires a lot of oomph.
For several years I have been following various electric tugs made for moving small GA airplanes around, and there are a lot of them, but they all have one thing in common. They are quite expensive. There have been lower cost versions around, I am working on a home made version but who knows when I will get around to finishing that.
I always perk up when someone announces a new "affordable" electric tug. Yeah, affordable for who, Bill Gates? Then a couple of weeks ago there was a new one posted on VAF. This one is made by an outfit called Chore Warrior. Chore Warrior is primarily a powered wheel barrow. Wait, a powered what? Why didn't they have these when I was younger?
Because they didn't design anything new other than the attachment at the front, they were able to put this out pretty easily. The regular price for this little jewel will be $1,149, which sounds like a lot, but compared to the others available is downright frugal. To make matters even better, they have an introductory special through Christmas of $400 off. $749 for an electric airplane tug is a very good bargain.
Some assembly required. While I figured the thing wouldn't come fully assembled and ready to use, just due to shipping costs, I was a little surprised to see how many parts it actually came in. I guess they figure if you can build an airplane, you can assemble a tug / wheel barrow. The directions that come with the unit are very good and the assembly video they have is even better. I just played the video on my iPad and followed along with the guy, pausing at each step to do what he did.
I don't think the cardboard box they use is quite adequate considering the weight of the unit. FedEx says it weighs 96 pounds. I remember when I could tote that much like it weighed nothing. I struggled with this to get it off my door step and into my truck. Getting it out of the truck and into the hangar was much easier, I used a hand truck.
Inside the big box are three smaller boxes.
I did have some shipping damage on my unit. There was a little bit of evidence on the outside of the box, but most of it was internal. The plastic cover on the battery box had a corner broken off and the cover on the charging receptacle was broken off. Other than that, everything went together and worked as advertised. As of this writing, I hadn't yet contacted Chore Warrior about the damage, that will be next.
Once I got everything unboxed, I had a small pile of parts on the floor of the hangar.
The first thing they have you do is mate the axles to the gearbox.
From there, they just have you add the rest of the parts that make up the main frame. Pictures of the whole process can be seen here.
By the time I got all of the handle pieces and such together, I no longer had room on the work bench and had to move it to the floor.
The last thing to add is the deck and the frame that holds the bit that grabs the tail wheel.
I think it may take me some time to get used to installing and removing the gizmo to and from the airplane.
Since, as mentioned above, it was raining and flying was out of the question, I couldn't really give it a good test. I did use it to push the airplane just outside since I wanted to wash it.
Above is a short video showing my first attempt from three different angles.
Once I got the airplane to the front of the hangar, I had a hard time getting it disconnected. I had to loosen the forward support for the tailwheel to get it off. I think I had it adjusted a little too tight. One thing I noticed was that the nut on the axle bolt was scratching the arm on the Plane Spotter. Upon closer inspection, on a small tailwheel like this, the arm isn't really lifting the wheel, it is lifting on the axle bolt. In my case, because of the spacers on the bolt, that is probably ok.
I don't think I care of this particular set up all that much. I prefer the one that Dan H. uses on his tugs.
I like the forks that cradle the axle and pick up the tail wheel that way. I am going to ask the folks at Chore Warrior if I can buy just the raw front attachment without the slot for the T-nut or the pad at the back and I will have a go at making some of these forks and bolt them on. I want to bolt them instead of welding them because I want to be able to adjust the gap between the two by adding or removing shims.
Once I get a chance to use it some more, I will update this post with a newer and more complete video.
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