Any of you good people out there in float flying land know the height of the tail on 108-3 Stinson when it’s sitting on floats?

We haven’t put ours on floats as of yet but am looking at a hangar for future use and want to make sure it’ll fit inside. Hangar door height is 12’4”.

Thanks!

Desmo,

Seaplanes North in Anchorage has a 108-3 sitting on floats in their For Sale lot.
Give them a call and maybe they can put a tape measure on the tail?

http://www.seaplanesnorth.com/1947-stin ... loatplane/

Dave

How soon do you need the info? There's one here on EDO 2425's I drive by every day but it's on a trailer buried in snow. I can get float bottom to rear fuselage attach points for example. Then you could measure the rest above that on yours? I assume you'll need a trailer to get in and out of the hangar as well. Might be ok for you to level your fuselage and then add float and trailer depth to your measured tail height.

Let me know.

Gary

At 12 ft 4 in. it'll be close, especially as Gary noted on a trailer. I'd figure out some way to lift the plane via the spreader bars if at all possible. That way you can lift the floats just barely off the surface.

Also, different floats are different sizes of barrel. Let us know the make model of floats you're using.

MTV

I did see an oooops once. Plane put in hangar then floats installed with ceiling lift. Crew tried to extract the plane on trailer but door too low. They had to remove the trailer and roll it out on pieces of home sewer pipe. Nobody had rolling floor pads available. They may have had to raise the nose of the plane to clear the tail but I left before the fireworks started.

Gary

Yeah, our maintenance outfit had to cut a slot in he ceiling of the hangar for the tail of our turbine beaver. It was on amphibs. They’d move it close to hangar door, then lift the bows of the floats with a forklift till that tall tale would clear, then push it inside, and lower the bows as the tail went up into the attic via the “slot”.

Major goat rope, but got it done for years.

Where there’s a will.....

MTV

I made a ramp for the nose wheels to roll up-on as the vertical stab goes under the door, it works great.
Because the distance from nose wheels to mains is about half of mains to tail it doesn't take much ramp to get the tail down.

It's actually pretty significant. I'd heard the tail on the -3 was large but I didn't realize just quite how large it was.

That one must be special.... Here’s my -3 with a much smaller tail.

Yea too tall...notice the two VOR antennas on the tail. Photoshop or a bad ass scorpion mod.

Gary

Thanks folks. We have 2870’s for ours. There is one on 2425’s around here so I think I’ll go find it and measure it up. I’ll need to add some fudge factor too.

I would build beaching gear to lift it from the spreaders so I won’t need much more than the ac height.

Cutting a notch in the header could be an option....