After I moved my aircraft to
a private T-hangar, I realized that a small aircraft tug would be very
useful. I looked at various ones offered in the aviation magazines, but
they seemed to cost a lot for a single use device. At that time, I owned
a Yamaha SECA 600 motorcycle. It turned out that I was only putting
1,000 miles on it a year, so I figured that I really didn't need it that
much. I finally decided that I would get an ATV for a tug and trade my
SECA 600 in on it. I went to the local Yamaha dealership and they gave
me a reasonable trade-in on my bike for a new ATV. |
The ATV came with a bracket
upon which you could install a trailer hitch, but the towbar for my
aircraft used a pin and I also needed to use a hitch ball for moving my
utility trailer which I also store in my hangar. Also, the original
hitch location on the ATV would not allow for very sharp turns due to
its width in conjunction with the opening in the towbar's end. For these
reasons, I decided that I needed to extend the hitch location somewhat
rearward while also leaving a normal ball mount in the original
location. Unfortunately, the original hitch mount bracket was angled down
somewhat, so my new extension was also angled down. This did not work
very well due to it being at the wrong angle for the towbar. After quite
a bit of heating and beating of the metal, I got a slight angle in the
new bracket and it now points rearward at a more horizontal angle. The
new bracket was constructed from a thick piece of aluminum that was a
leftover from the remains of my gyro crash. |