Jim Campbell spied a little something interesting at NBAA-BACE 2023: A remote control aircraft tug. Tracy Haeggstrom, mechanical engineer for AC Air Technology, walked him through the upsides of the easy life without a tow bar. His firm’s RC tug can be had in 7 different models, allowing for the right selection for an aircraft’s size and weight and footprint. It makes wheeling around an aircraft an absolute breeze, with a remote control giving operators complete freedom of movement as they walk around the aircraft.
The system can work for pretty much any aircraft under the sun, Haeggstrom notes, even a Cirrus with those large wheel fairings. The whole process is hands-free, requiring an operator to simply position the tug by controls, and command it to engage and lock itself to the wheels.
Pricing isn’t too painful, either - at least, it’s much cheaper than the back surgery one needs after a bad winter slip hand-pushing a heavy twin uphill. Haeggstrom says that on the low end, the basic AC Air Technology tug runs about $4,000, with the highest-end ones at the $11,000 price-point in 2023 dollars. For operators cramming in multiple aircraft to a hangar, it could be just the ticket to staving off the expansion to lease another bay - perfectly arranging a puzzle of aircraft is much easier when you can walk all around the plane.
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