Hope im posting this in the right location... As September approaches rather quickly, I will be getting the 140 ready to send east from Hawaii to California. I was wondering if anybody has any tips and tricks for safely loading and securing a light taildragger into a shipping container? Pictures of any method you have found successful would be a great help. Thanks all!

There are several methods, depends on your aircraft. First off is how wide is your gear track? Sometimes, especially on taildraggers, you can chinch the gear in with cargo straps, real ones, not the hardware store stuff. Otherwise, you need to make a cradle and support the fuselage. The tail feathers need to come off. I made boxes for my 206 to hold the wings and tail feathers. You can also use vertical wing stands, supporting them in three places. The same can be used for the tail feathers. If you box, then start sourcing the plywood now and wrap everything with closed cell foam.

Your in the military, right? You may be able to scrounge some of the materials from the supply guys, if they throw it out on inbound shipments. Get some preservative oil from Spruce and read the Lycoming SB on preserving your engine. Get some desiccator plugs from Spruce as well and replace the top spark plugs with them. You can spray and steel components with LPS-3, it leaves a film to keep things from corroding. Spray any raw aluminum with it as well, like the wing mounts and such. Tape over static ports and cap the pitot tube. You may want to remove the gyro and send it a slightly gentler way. If you can find some large silica gel packs, put a couple in the carb intake and tape it over. If they are old packs, you can re-active them in an oven 240° for 3 hours to drive out the absorbed moisture.

When you load the container, strap everything down really well, ship pitch roll and heave. A bud of mine removed the prop from a 210 for shipping. It came loose somewhere on the voyage and it virtually cuisenated the airplane.

Look online, there are several sites with pics. Every model airplane is a bit different, but there are good ideas that can be adapted for yours

Thanks dogpilot! From what I can tell. You've done this enough times and know what you're doing. I found some good pictures and think I got an idea or two, just gotta build all the jigs. Good idea on pickling the engine, didnt even think of that. My general thought process was to load the container almost the same way a sailplane trailer would be loaded.

Make sure that in no way a "load" is transmitted into the fuselage, wings or any other components. The container is the protection from external elements but the "precious cargo" needs to be "isolated" within the external protection and unable to shift as well.

I know that it's not practical, or possible, but that would be one really fun cross country/water. Planning and flying it would be an excellent challenge. "Just silly Thinking"
Anyway,
When I haul planes I make sure that nothing touches nothing except padding.