Picking up the 701 in an RV???

Sort of a spin off of the how to pick up an aircraft kit, I personally have a few trucks and an open 16 ft trailer. A friend of mine that wants to help with my build also wants to go along and use his Mercedes sprinter based RV and has offered to use his 20 ft enclosed trailer. He has pulled it behind the sprinter before but it isn't optimal. That is our current plan but the idea has come up to just take the sprinter and put the kit inside. The kit is not going to be boxed. We are going to stay in a hotel anyway so being able to stay in the RV is not a problem. It is just a better way to travel then crammed in the cab of a loud truck. So is it possible to pick it up in the RV?  I think it should mostly fit on the bed. The spars should be the only long pieces but are there any other pieces longer than 6ft?

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Permalink Reply by Perry Delano on January 27, 2015 at 12:04am

The skins are as long as the spars, but you can roll those up.

Permalink Reply by Tim Juhl on January 27, 2015 at 1:57pm

A good question to ask Zenith. I have a Sprinter but would never consider trying to haul a kit in it.  If it were a cargo sprinter I would say "no problem" but if you have to bend everything around thru a small door and don't have a long flat surface to lay the skins on you're setting yourself up for some possible "dings".  Me, I'd use the trailer.

Tim

Permalink Reply by Ronald Steele on January 28, 2015 at 3:16pm

I'm I the only one that thought of an Van's RV (like a RV-7) for couple of seconds when I saw the title?

Had to do a complete mental reset!

Ron

Permalink Reply by Kurt Satter on January 31, 2015 at 2:29pm

I just picked up my 701 complete kit in a long-wheelbase standard cargo van.  The guys at the factory loaded me up in less than 40 min.  The skins were placed on the floor 12'6" x slightly less than 4' wide.  Spars fit just fine too ...

Permalink Reply by Ben Fangmeier on March 22, 2015 at 12:04am

Thanks for the input. As bad of an idea this is, it looks like we are going to try it. We removed the bed and have made a "table" spanning the kitchen area to hold the longer parts. Based on the math it should work but its going to be close. I have set up a uhaul trailer just in case it doesn't work out. As long as the skins roll up well there should be no problems. 

Permalink Reply by Ben Fangmeier on March 27, 2015 at 9:12pm

Well we picked up the kit and it seems to have fit fairly well. The Zenith personnel were very good at helping pack the parts. Definitely not as comfortable as the trip out but still better than 4 people sitting in a regular cab truck. 

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