As a Herk loadmaster I have amassed hundreds maybe thousands of hours comfortably napping away in my hammock. In fact, it sometimes seems I sleep better listening to those four beautiful props than I do in my own bed but that's beside the point. I have seen pictures of the Wilgabeast as well as M6RV6's Broussard with hammocks strung from the wing tiedown to somewhere about the fuselage a la
Has anybody done this on other planes? Specifically a Pacer? Any pics or info would be greatly appreciated.

SD

I am a recent hammock convert. I built some "treeless, Pacer friendly stands" but I would love to hang it from the plane.

I figure one point off the plane and one on a tree or stand would work well.

Not much room under the wing of a shortwing piper vs a french beaver.

True statement about the available real estate beneath the wing!

I'm working on a couple of Ideas, one involves a stand on one end and the wing tiedown on the other. The other idea is a single point setup from only the tiedown. Clearly the tiedown point is built to handle the weight of the wind trying to lift the plane but is there any data as to a limitation on this? Would it happily support my 190ish pounds or would that be asking too much of a single tiedown point? Noob question probably but I'd hate to cause damage with something silly like a Hammock.

Remember, you are applying negative Gs to the wing struts.

You are a lucky C130 LM.... I have far more hours sucking exhaust fumes and facing extreme temps during EROs than I do napping in a hammock!! I've tried the hammocks on oversea flights going to and from the desert but I liked the litters more. We usually took about 8 with us so people could stretch out and relax.

TCJ- That's what I'm concerned about. It wouldnt be a very good tieDOWN if it weren't able to withstand the downward force or negative G applied during the tiedown process or forces applied while holding the bird down during say a wind storm... or.... I don't know, earthquake maybe but I dont know how much force would be generated there during a good blow. 15lb? 87lb? 230lb? surely there's some guidance somewhere. Maybe just my Naval Aviation conditioning speaking but....

Rob- Yeah, I was in the Navy VR community for 7+ years where our primary mission was global logistics support {read: trash hauling} so most of our flights would start with say loading a plane full of bubble wrap or rubber dog scat at NAS West Coast and offloading said cargo at some hell hole in the middle east. That made for a lot of 8-10 hr legs, good R.O.N. stops and as always with the Mighty Herc, unintentional stops to fix leaky props etc. I'm now in a test and evaluation outfit where our legs are typically much shorter so although my hammock goes everywhere with me in my overnight bag, it rarely sees the light of day.

SD

Not a structural engineer so this may be way off base and a definitely and over-simplified example... but if you had a 2000 pound airplane with 2 struts on each side in a -1G maneuver, isn't each strut is supporting a compression load of around 500 pounds? Never tried it myself but it doesn't seem like a hammock, where only roughly half your body weight would be supported by a compression force on the wing strut would really tax the structure.

scottf wrote:Not a structural engineer so this may be way off base and a definitely and over-simplified example... but if you had a 2000 pound airplane with 2 struts on each side in a -1G maneuver, isn't each strut is supporting a compression load of around 500 pounds? Never tried it myself but it doesn't seem like a hammock, where only roughly half your body weight would be supported by a compression force on the wing strut would really tax the structure.

I was just kidding, although I've seen pilots that might be testing it near limits.

For those pilots I'd recommend snoozing in the utility category.

scottf wrote:For those pilots I'd recommend snoozing in the utility category.

Hahahahaha!!

Here's an idea that plits the difference:

Make up a tripod/teepee stand out of three lightweight aluminum poles. Place this teepee stand under the wing/strut junction. Hang the heavier "skull" side of the hammock from this tripod hammock, then tie a support rope from the strut fitting down to the top of the tripod. This uses the airplane to stabilize the tripod from tipping over. But the main weight of the pilot in the hammock is not putting any stress on any part of the airplane.

Tie the "foot" end of the hammock to the bottom of the strut at the fuselage, where the weight will not exert much leverage or bending force on the strut.

Good thought EZ, I'm now leaning toward splitting the difference since in a single point test run on my patio yesterday, my spreader bar nearly killed me I think I the rope angles necessitated by the the height of the wing tie down point are too extreme and overstressed the spreader bar so it's back to the drawing board on that one. Another thought I had that is similar to the tripod/teepee is a nylon tiedown strap for a tiedown which has a loop at about the same height as the bottom of the strut at the fuselage.this would put about 95lb worth of force on each.

In an email reply I got from Piper yesterday they of course recommended that tie downs be used for the purpose they were designed for, but they also said that the FAA requires that a tie down be "tested and able to withstand the limit loads resulting from a 65 knot horizontal wind from any direction" so somebody poke holes in my logic here. If 65kt is sufficient for flight, then between both wings, at least 2000lb of lift is created. If a tie down point is rated to counteract at least that much force (1000lb per wing), splitting my weight and putting 95lb or even the single point method putting 190lb of downward force should be nowhere near the damage realm. Am I missing something in that logic?

SD

scottf wrote:Not a structural engineer so this may be way off base and a definitely and over-simplified example... but if you had a 2000 pound airplane with 2 struts on each side in a -1G maneuver, isn't each strut is supporting a compression load of around 500 pounds? Never tried it myself but it doesn't seem like a hammock, where only roughly half your body weight would be supported by a compression force on the wing strut would really tax the structure.

The forward strut takes the vast majority of the load from direct lift, the after strut is there to keep the wing from twisting. So in your case (just to throw out a number) you would be putting probably about 900 to 1100 pounds down (in the wheels direction) at the forward strut / tiedown. The actual compression load on the strut would be closer to twice that due to the angles.

When you hang a hammock you would get about, well, for my lard ass, 114 pounds down plus something like 200 - 300 pounds towards the other end of the hammock (again due to the angles) (some of the compression would end up in the wing) for something like 400 - 500ish pounds of compression on the strut compared to the 2000 pounds from -1 G (give or take 100% or so).

No engineers were harmed during the production of this post.

What Geoffrey said.

Force vectors play a huge role here. The force on the tie down will not be at 90 degrees. SHould work, but,..

Couple of thoughts:

If a hammock isn't strung pretty tight, the occupant's butt will hit the ground. I have a pic somewhere of a "neighbor" at Marble a couple years ago, who strung his hammock from the tie down wing to the step of his 170. The pic shows him lying on the ground.

I just bought an ENO lounge chair, which is sort of like a single point hammock. It's very comfortable, and with a little tightening of the straps, it hangs from the tie down of my P172D with my butt clearing the ground by several inches. It doesn't seem to pull the wing down any more than snugging tie downs does--and I'm at 192# as of a few days ago.

Cary