Whelp I sure created a lot more work than was necessary. A bit of background, I share my hanger with a Cessna 180 and my partner has a Best Tugs Alpha A3. When I moved my plane in with her I tried to use her tug on my plane but found the adapters were too wide to fit in the wheel pants holes. Blerg, figured I was stuck pushing my plane back in the hanger, which in the summer is no biggie but come snow season it can be near impossible to do alone.
Then at Oshkosh I spoke with Mark Patey (owner of Best Tugs) and he explained I would need to open up the wheel pant holes (not possible with the FlyBoy tug guards) or fabricate adapters. Best Tugs was concerned about damaging wheel pants and was not willing to offer an adapter option for the RV-10. Blerg, unfortunately my credit card would not solve the issue.
Fast forward, my friend Andrew at Branch and Foundry has a metal lathe and with winter approaching I decided it was time to tackle this myself. I took measurements, made up a drawing and talked Andrew into making a couple adapters for me.
He got started on the project and one final trip to the hanger to make sure the adapter width was correct led me to a revelation – if I removed the Cessna 180 adapters and adjusted one of the Slide outs on a Connecting Arm it fit perfectly over the bolts used to attach a tow bar or tug to an RV-10. Blerg, I got Andrew started on solving a problem that didn’t need to be solved.
So for anyone that has an RV-10, know that you don’t need anything special to use the Alpha A3 tug. I guess I will call this a win.
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