·:[ Darryl's Coot Building Journal ]:·
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This is part III of a series on N5814L, a 1972 AA-5 Traveler. Two weekends ago, we prepared the plane for trailering from Dave Wheeler’s Northwest Aviation at AWO to co-owner Russ Milham’s shop just north of Seattle.

Our adventures in trailering began with trying to find a suitable trailer. I posted a query on a regional aviation forum. A person named dww generously offered us his trailer, although it required a weekday pick-up an a bit of work to make roadworthy. The weekday pick-up proved to be difficult, because I don’t have a vehicle with a trailer hitch, and Russ’ vehicle wasn’t available during the week. But I also found a trailer for rent via Craigslist that was two minutes away from the airport.

Our trailering plans got put on hold for a week owning to an insurance snafu. Schedules didn’t allow us to get started until Saturday, mid-afternoon. When Russ showed up to pick up the Craigslist trailer, it was smaller than described and probably wasn’t going to work very well. Uh-oh. On top of that, the guy wasn’t willing to wait for Russ to do some measurements on the airplane and come back. Russ walked away.

I called an old friend, Richard V., who lives in nearby Marysville. Richard is a homebuilder with lots of connections in the local aviation community. His response? “I have a tilt bed trailer right here you can use. Come on over.” Wow!

After a few minutes rigging up an adaptor cable for the lights, we were on our way.

The Traveler is 8′3″ wide between the main gear tire midlines. We stopped by a lumber store and got a 2×8 cut to 8′6″, the maximum width allowed for a normal width trailer. With a little scrap lumber from a nearby dumpster, we rigged up a ramp.

(Another view.)

A couple of come-alongs were used to winch the plane into the trailer. The nylon strap from one winch was passed through the spar tube.

(Another view.)

The next step was to strap down the tail. Notice the 2×8 with a furniture pad underneath on top of the tail attach point. There is plenty of bendable aluminum in this area:

(Another view.)

…and lowering the bed of the trailer.

(Another view.)

The winches were replaced by cargo straps through and around the spar. A second strap was added to the tail, and engine components were secured with tie-wraps and covered in plastic and duct tape.

Finally, the wings were stacked under the fuselage with furniture pads in between. And the horizontal tail section was stacked on top of the wings.

(Other views: here, here, here, here, here.)

The road trip was uneventful. On our 30 mile trek down the I-5 corridor, we were passed by three police cars who, apparently, didn’t find it the least bit suspicious to be trailering an airplane under the cloak of darkness.

Unloading the plane was relatively simple using a thick piece of plywood as a ramp.

(Another view.)

The Eagle has landed.

The next stop was my house, where Russ dropped off the left wing and trailer. The day was a success, if a little on the long side—we end at about 1:00 a.m. Sunday. But quite a haul!

It was Saturday morning, 14 March 2009, and Russ Milham, a bunch of friends and I showed up at Northwest Aviation at AWO to dismantle N5814L, a 1972 Traveler, for trailering.

All of the photos in this post were taken by Steve Johnson, who also did a lot of disassembly work.

Here she is as we left her after inspection:

Here’s Russ surveilling the task ahead of us. Notice that cylinder one and its piston have been removed—that was from an inspection. We’re rebuilding the engine, so the rod was secured in a bed of cardboard for transportation.

And here I am bagging the lose stuff in the cabin.

The vertical fin is removed. You can see a person under the inboard end of each wing dealing with fuel lines and electrical connections in preparation for wing removal.

Following the service manual instructions was mostly helpful…as was the occasional swig of coffee.

My friend Tim Lange pulled the carburetor and alternator. The carb was sent out to a rebuilder the following Monday.

The last step was pulling the wings off, a process that required five people. One person was in the cabin to deal with the exiting torque tubes, two people were stationed at the outboard end and two at the inboard end. The idea was to engage in a coordinated rotation of the wing, with a bit of up-down rock to find the sweet spot where friction is minimized between the center-section spar and the wing spar.

We first tried the left wing. It was stubborn, but with persistent rocking the root eventually started pulling away from the plane 0.1 mm at a time. The first inch required about 90% of the effort. After that it was pretty simple. The right wing came off with no difficulties.

Steve was helping to pull the wing, so there are no photos of the process. Here’s the aftermath, with Russ and me tucking 14L into a corner.

All put away and awaiting a trailer….

We loaded everything but the horizontal tail section, the two wings, and the hull into our cars, and headed off into the sunset. Next post: Trailering a Traveler.

A couple of months ago, my Coot-building buddy, Russ Milham, and I were visiting Dave Wheeler and Northwest Aviation at their new location at the Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO). In one corner of the shop, we spotted some type of Grumman four seater.

We looked over the plane, an early AA5 Traveler, as Dave Wheeler explained that his shop was assessing the plane’s value for an estate. As it happens, Russ and I had been talking about a partnership in a 4-seater of some type. The AA5 family was definitely on our list. We took a closer look:

Don’t get me wrong…I love my Yankee, and it satisfies my mission about 80% of the time (solo local, solo cross-country, two-people locally). But the Yankee’s limited endurance with a passenger, limits on passenger weight, and limits on passenger height (to about 6′2″), sometimes gets in the way.

Anyway, Russ and I made a deal with Dave…we would do much of the labor required to inspect and assess the plane. That would give us a chance to do our private valuation, and the estate would get a less-expensive valuation. If we liked what we found, we would make an offer. Oh…I should mention that Russ is an A&P mechanic.

N5814L is a 1972 AA-5 Traveler, serial number 14. Based on on-board paperwork and logbooks, the plane has not flown since sometime around 2001. The interior is…well, old:

The panel is pretty basic and very dated. We didn’t evaluate any of the avionics, except to note that the ELT was missing.

Russ and I spend a couple of weekends opening up the plane and performing inspections. Our squawk list was long. There was a potentially un-reparable left aileron. Both fuel tanks leaked, a problem that requires an enormous amount of labor to repair. Shops charge may thousands of dollars per wing for resealing these tanks.

The engine needs an overhaul. It had had a field overhaul in 1994, but we had no paperwork whatsoever, aside from an insufficient log entry—no yellow tags for components or record of dimensional inspections. Either way, the engine has been sitting for eight years and is past Lycoming’s TBO of 12 years.

We made an offer to the estate. Dave Wheeler had assessed a similar value, and everything got passed onto the to estate. For several reasons, it took about five weeks for the estate to accept our offer and ensure a trouble-free transfer of ownership.

Last Saturday Russ and I bought the plane. We will do much of the work to return 14L to service ourselves. For starters, Russ is rebuilding the engine, and I am going to work on resealing the fuel tanks. (Of course, we’ll be shipping engine components out for proper measurement, inspection, and rebuild.) Most of the plane goes to Russ’ shop, whereas I get one wing at a time, and sort some of the components in mine.

Next installment…dismantling for trailering the plane.