Hauling Freight in my DA40

[Rich]

Our EAA chapter received a donation (aka dumped on us) of two Lycoming O-235-C engines in the form of assorted boxes of parts. We have no way to use them and they are just something else (among a lot of stuff) to constantly stumble over in the hangar. A sister EAA chapter in Independence, OR (a really large and active chapter) was willing to take this stuff in lieu of us scrapping it all for a relatively minuscule sum. I need to travel over to the West side in late October anyway so I offered to drop it all off with only a slight detour on the way.

Then I got this idea: Two O-235's weigh right at 500 lb. If I fly solo I can carry those engines in my plane. It's only 1 hour each way. So I do a W&B and it'll work if I distribute the weight appropriately. 100lb. in the front seat and the rest on the rear seats. That'll work. Add in a margin by only departing S39 with 30 gallons.

So I start weighing parts so I will really know what everything weighs. Pretty soon I realize this'll be a tedious process. Boxes falling apart, stuff loaded randomly into them. Then the reality hits: What if I had to make an off-airport landing and it involved a sudden stop with 400 lb of hard metal projectiles coming forward attacking my one-and-only person? How do I secure them?

So I'll be taking them over next month in my pickup.

[alanhawse]

I laughed out loud when I saw the title of this post..

It reminded me of a famous computer scientist Andrew Tanenbaum who said ~"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway"