Recently I had the Spitfire off the road for some much needed repairs and maintenance. One of the features I decided to finish up was a hang glider rack for carrying my glider to and from the beach.
Sparky carries my hang glider
The glider is much longer than the car, and it looks a little silly, but it works. I built it in such a way that the rack slides into some telescoping tubing underneath the frame of the vehicle. Cotter pins hold them tightly in place. The rack can be removed and stored with the glider for later.
I need to make sure I can make it back and forth to the beach and/or mountain, but I think I can, and confidence is half the battle.
Still wet from a fresh wash.
Awesome! it looks like we have some common interests.
I was debating whether I could carry my glider (Bautek Astir) on my TR4a. Although I had ruled it out, your post makes me rethink. Any more information about your rig would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Alain
It really wasn’t too complicated. I welded receiver tubes to the under carriage of the frame. I chose spots that wouldn’t make the ground clearance any lower. And I made a simple tube support that could hold the glider over the passenger. I use some quick release pins to lock the steel into the receiver tubes, much like how a removable tow hitch works. If you’re scared of doing it yourself, take this problem to a handy welder/fabricator and they’ll know what to do. A diagonal support forward and backward is probably a good idea to deal with acceleration and deceleration. I used 1.5″, 16 gauge steel tubes since the glider isn’t all that heavy. Good luck!
Thank you. I have different cars and different options, but as my daily driver has 400k on the odometer, I will definitely keep that in mind. It would also be tremendously cool to go flying with the TR4!