Lowering the fuselage

With the landing gear installed, fairings aligned, and us ready to mount the engine, it was time to put the fuselage on the gear.  We used 5 people to lift it on the workbench originally, but since then, we installed the landing gear, which added a ton of weight.  Since we needed to borrow a shop crane to mount the engine anyway, I thought we should use that to lift the fuselage off the table and lower it to the floor.  Kelly’s dad has a friend with one we could borrow, which was fantastic.  Unfortunately, the jack was low on fluid (or something… I don’t know much about hydraulic jacks), so it didn’t go up all the way.  We were able to make it work, though.  Here’s what we did:

• Attach straps from the engine mount to the crane hook.
• Lift the hook on the crane, lifting the fuselage to about 1/4-1/2″ above the workbench.  Remember, the tail is supported on an A-frame ladder, so at this point, all the weight is on the ladder at the tail and the straps on the engine mount.
• Pull the workbench out of the way.
• Lower the crane.  With the ladder in the back, as we lowered the crane, the nose was pointed down more and more.  We took a couple of the elastometers off the nose gear, so that it could pivot upward more than normal, ensuring the main wheels would touch first.  We wanted to make sure we didn’t end up with all the weight on the nose gear.
• With the weight on the mains, we could lift the tail off the ladder and put it on a much lower sawhorse.

There you have it.  We still need to support the tail, as we haven’t installed the engine yet, so it’s really tail heavy.  Here are some pictures of the process.