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More Tiedowns: Abes In a Walk

Just as we thought we had put portable tiedown tests snugly to bed, along come two companies who said..sorry, but you forgot us. Following our review of tiedown performance during last Aprils tornado at Sun n Fun, were looking at two products that claim to be the best. (But only one really is.) We bought a set of Storm Force tiedowns and a company called Abes Aviation sent us a sample kit of its product, one of the most highly engineered products weve seen to date. Into this mix, we made up a set of steel rod anchors of the sort we saw used in the JAARs and Diamond Aircraft booths to see how they would fare.

Just as we thought we had put portable tiedown tests snugly to bed, along come two companies who said..sorry, but you forgot us. Following our review of tiedown performance during last Aprils tornado at Sun n Fun, were looking at two products that claim to be the best. (But only one really is.)

We bought a set of Storm Force tiedowns and a company called Abes Aviation sent us a sample kit of its product, one of the most highly engineered products weve

seen to date. Into this mix, we made up a set of steel rod anchors of the sort we saw used in the JAARs and Diamond Aircraft booths to see how they would fare.

Storm force

On its website (www.Storm Forcetiedowns.com), Storm Force claims to be 300 percent stronger and 10 percent lighter than the competition. True? That depends on the competition and the soil where the game is played.

As shown in the photos, the Storm Force system consists of three aluminum angles through which what amount to giant aluminum nails are driven at a perpendicular angle to the pulling force. Each angle gets four pins. Ropes, a case and a hammer

Paul Bertorelli

Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.