Huey Tail Boom shipping assembly

[Bradley Walker]

I thought you guys might find this interesting.

One of my designs from my "Bell Book" .  This is a tail boom assembly from a Huey/Cobra in a shipping assembly.   Bell makes tons of these for repair and they get moved all over from plant to plant for processing.   This may seem like a simple  dolly but it's not.   The head of the dolly mimics the aft firewall of the helicopter and it set at a very precise angle to allow for the tail rotor.  The rear stinger is captured in a plasticized box.



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[Tim Wescott]

People don't appreciate manufacturing & shipping fixtures until they have to design them, especially if, like that dolly, they need to build more than one.

[Steve Helmick]

The last place I worked (I'm retired!) got a contract to build prototype shipping crates for 737 winglets. This was a machine shop, but the engineers decided to build the prototypes themselves. The crates looked like they were made by Mrs. Pearson's 6th grade class, and dragged up I-5 from Portland behind a '57 Chevy...in 1957. They really wanted to make them in-house, but ended up farming them out to a cabinet shop. Basically, they couldn't make a decent plywood box.  Steve

[Tim Wescott]

Designing and building are two different things.  The best designers that I know (and hopefully I'm in that group!) can also build, although not necessarily as well as the best builders.

[Mike Scholtes]

I saw a one-hour training film produced in about 1944 showing the assembly of a P-47 Thunderbolt in the field by mostly untrained labor. The plane was delivered in two wooden crates, one holding the fuselage with engine mounted and the other the wing panels (or maybe two wing crates, one per panel). The crates become the assembly and rigging jig. The plane's major components were assembled using simple hand tools and a LOT of grunt labor. 50 men to lift each wing panel into place. Holes dug in the ground to swing the gear down into position, after which the plane could be towed out by the transporter truck. This was brilliant engineering and had to start on the drawing board at Republic. A lot of Soviet aircraft were designed that way. The Yak 50 and 52 trainers are re-crated and sent back to the factory for overhauls for example. If I  can find the film again I will try to post it, fascinating stuff.

[Tim Wescott]

I saw a one-hour training film produced in about 1944 showing the assembly of a P-47 Thunderbolt in the field by mostly untrained labor.

This one?

[Fredvon4]

I was AH -1G Cobra maintenance post Viet Nam at Fort Hood in the 70s. We were rebuilding quite a few of the worn out birds sent to the 1st Cav to form new units. Many went to Corpus Christy Army depot (CCAD) for extensive repair and is where I first saw something similar to what is shown above.

But at our Aviation Intermediate Maintenance company (4/227th) the Cobra tails booms we received were in ply wood shipping crates that were a pain to move and open

I remember the assembly bolted up perfectly and relatively fast to the air-frame but you have no idea how many hours go into wiring and rigging the damned thing. Especially with all the trades were involved; Avionics in there, armament computers and wires, prop rotor folks, drive train folks, sheet metal guys and gals, endless tech inspectors

Our biggest problem was converting 7 of the G models to Modified S (adapted for airborne TOW missile system), eventually the Program Manager came up with the funds for us to send three to CCAD and let the Depot guys help do the hard and long down time work

I was sent as a Technical inspector to help as most of the work at depot is civilian contractors and Army Tech inspectors were in short supply as the Army transitioned to all volunteer work force and was down sizing drastically

[Mike Scholtes]

Yeah, that one! Now I don't have to hunt for it. I recommend it to anybody who likes mechanical stuff, which I reckon is everybody who frequents this forum.

We can learn something about take-apart models, though the 1:1 scale factor may not translate to aircraft under 20,000 lbs empty weight.

[Bradley Walker]

Rotating shipping container I designed for the Huey transmission.

The design was later modified to become the assembly fixture in Amarillo.