Tail Pull Handle

Airplanes have a lot of places you shouldn't push / pull on.  On high wing aircraft, you have the struts which works great with 2 people.  For trikes, you can use a handle on the nose wheel.  The prop works, but has risk associated with it.

Some tail draggers have retractable handles on the rear fuselage.... a Tail Pull Handle... 

B.A.S. makes one for the Sportsman.  They are a pretty simple concept.  Essentially it is a tube that mounts on the airframe, with small retractable handles (another tube) that you can use to push / pull the airplane around.

Ted Setzer wrote this up for the forum, and as usual I am following his trail.

There is a .09 stainless wire that stops the tube from popping out.  On the inboard side, there is a bolt that goes through the outer tube and the wire is wrapped around it.  On the handle side, the wire is welded to a washer.

Step #1 was disassembly... I ended up unbending the wire around the bolt, with the hope of wrapping it back around after the handles have been anodized.

Step #2 is drilling the mounting holes in the fuselage.  You crawl in the fuselage with a hole saw and drill the first hole up against the forward side of bulkhead B.  Then I got out and put the tube into the first hole... using a small level I marked the top of the other side and drilled it next.

I started the holes on the inside, through the inner layer of glass.  Then I finished the hole from the outside.  The act of drilling the inner gummed up the hole saw enough that I had to get out anyway to remove the debris.

I used a 1 1/8th hole saw.  The outer tube is slightly bigger than 1 1/8.  I tested on a thin piece of wood first, and it was right on the money.

Step #3:  Getting the handles anodized.  I unwound the wire and extracted the retaining mechanism and sent the handles off.  They are nice and black.

Step #4:  Reassembly.  I put the whole thing back together and then filled the cavities in the fuselage with a mixture of resin, cabosil, and milled fibre.  Then inserted the handle from the inside, and filled the gaps between bulkhead B and the handle.

To be clear, I reassembled the anodized parts BEFORE I bonded it in place.  I just could not see an easy way to do this after the fact.  Hopefully I don't regret this decision...

Step 5:  Fiberglass reinforcement over top of the handle to bulkhead B.

Step 6: Trim the excess handle on the outside of the fuselage.  I put aluminum tape around the hole to start with to act as a buffer between the sanding disk and fuselage.  Once I got to that level, I removed it and trimmed the last little bit very carefully.  I did all this with the handle installed, so I taped up the handle and put a towel inside.  I sucked out all the shavings with a shop vac before removing.