Hensley Arrow: How does it REALLY work?

Trail-Mate wrote:
You guys have done a great job of analyzing this Hitch. Hensley had a display setup at the Hershey Show. I watched the person display and describe the hitches operation. The displayer stated the the hitches links that form the trapaziod. He then said to draw a line from the links forward they will intersect at 5 1/2 feet forward. So acording to him the pivot point is now there. So from the trailers perspective it can't cause motion on the TV because the pivot point location is not actually a pivot point so its locked. The TV can turn the hitch because that virtual pivot point does not exhist looking back from the TV. That is they way it was explined at the Show. They had the model that they show in the video in the booth. I also got a free hat.

Would have been very entertaining, if Ron, Tim, Don & I could have been at that display, and had a discussion with the displayer there. :)

His initial point about the two sides intersecting at 5 1/2 feet, may or may not be 100% accurate. I measured the sides on my Hensley, and as you'll see early in this thread, we used these measurements, and came up with a figure of about 47" forward (about 4 feet). Not sure which is more accurate (4 or 5 1/2), but we'll leave that minor detail alone for now.

Still, his ascertion that the pivot point is 'not there', confuses me. If the trailer pivots, it DOES pivot through this virtual pivot point as we called it, so I don't understand why he says the point is not there. Sounds like a little marketing gibberish and double-talk going on there. Granted, we have established that for several reasons its nearly impossible for the trailer to induce any pivoting, but we won't go down that path again.

Anyway, like I said, sure would have been entertaining, if those of us that had this loooong, detailed discussion about the Hensley, could have discussed it with the displayer you saw at the show there. :)

Will