When I built my hoist I had planned to use an electric hoist but after consideration I decided to use a couple of chain blocks instead. A couple of them is much less cost than a single electric hoist, no power requirements but most important, far finer control. Electric often results in 'a little bit higher, no, too much, down just a **** hair'!
The chain fall is easy to get right.
The attached pic shows one end of the traveling cross beam hanging from one of the main support beams. The reason it is hanging 12" below the main support is to allow the travelling cross beam to clear under the garage door overhead support tracks when the beam travels to the front of the shop.
I'd planned to have a few updates by now on something I've been working on so I could say whether I'd do it again, but issues at work had me working far too much overtime. At least it will cover some of what I've already spent ;-).
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: What I'd do differently... or the same. Nice. Got a closer image of the trusses & track? Most garage door track here in the USA is basically C channel (more of a notched 0) that's typically supported only on the ends. When I built my workshop I knew I would need to lift stuff around and I’m not getting any younger and like to be self-sufficient. So I guess you mean something like attached. I designed it for 250 KG which is plenty for my activities. I used 250KG garage door track with good support for the spans. The travelling beam spans 5.8 mts. The electric hoist (250KG) was AUD$104.00 including postage. All up I spent about AUD$600.00 building it 4 years ago so not that expensive. Cheers. Nige.
Subject: [FlyRotary] What I'd do differently... or the same.
Yeah, this is a good topic because of that damn hindsight thing! I already listed the one thing about the overhead crane or engine hoist, but on another more practical note. I got my airplane in the air in 3 years from knowing nothing about airplanes to choosing a kit, building (not a quickbuild), designing and building an alternative engine FWF to first flight, then learning to fly. It was all great fun at home in my shop where I could work on it every spare minute. There was many very late nights where the creativity was coming fast and furious and lots of times I'd wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea and head to the shop. Then I was in a hurry to move it to the airport. I hated working on it out there. I could go on with a long list of reasons why, but it was hard to continue experimenting with it out there and I started regretting doing some things that I was otherwise glad that I tried. I tried to deny this to myself and stay excited and positive about it all. By the time that I took it home 2 years later, I was not really interested in dealing with it. And since we had just bought the land across the road, I had a new shop to build, barns to build, a kid to raise and a thousand other distractions, so that it took till now to get interested again. Fortunately, my wife only once made mention of selling it, but from my reaction never mentioned it again, but I can see how so many projects get abandoned at this point. So from that, what would I do differently? Hard to be sure since I didn't have the flight experience to make some different choices, but eve
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