My hangar/shop has a 60' x 60' main room with 14' ceilings. I am sick of constantly having to re-arrange everything especially when I have to make room for the occasional customer airplane. My high wing Pacer is not so bad because I can park cars under the wings, but my mid wing 27' wingspan Minimax "ultralight" just eats up way too much floorspace. I finally took the plunge and came up with a plan to hang it from the ceiling.
My hangar is constructed with trusses on 4' centers and has a steel panel ceiling. I was unsure about how to proceed as I don't want to end up with a sagging structure, but I ended up using an old piece of 6" x 2" x 9' long channel iron to span across three lower 2" x 8" truss members near some diagonals and I then screwed some vertical 2" x 4" boards to both the channel, the upper/lower truss members and the diagonals they crossed. I then cut a hole in the ceiling to allow the hoist mount I made to be solidly bolted to the channel iron.
The electric hoist is rated at 440 lbs single line or 880 lbs with the included pully block. My airplane is just under 300 lbs but I will likely use the double line to have a slower line speed. I screwed around a bit tonight experimenting to figure out the best lifting points. I wil need to build some sort of spreader/sling gizmo to gently lift the airplane.
Any input from folks with experience with pole building trusses would be welcome as I do not want to cause any long term structural damage to my building. When I lifted it a few inches tonight it felt very solid and my guess is that the 400-450 max pounds including channel/hoist/airplane will be fine spread across the three trusses. It is about 12' from the wall on a 60' wide structure.
Parts fabbed and ready to haul up into the attic.
A view of my ****ty mess up stairs to get a feel for the type of truss construction.
Channel sitting on lower 2x8 truss members and screwed to newly installed verticals
3/16 wall 1 1/2" square hoist mount weldment bolted to vertical web of channel with two grade eight 3/8" bolts.
Test lift.... Nose heavy in this pic... will probably lift from sling here and a point 18 " forward lifting from landing gear center tube. Probably will build a four point spreader bar.
