from the videos, it wasn't very apparent how much the gas struts really help.
My thinking is that if i was able to uniformly load the kayak on the side of the car at my chest level, i would be able to pivot the weight of the kayak up pretty easily vs. essentially doing a military press. The gas struts would be good to dampen it on the way down. I still have about 30 gas struts from past projects that I can use
current thinking is maybe going to one of my job sites and get some unistruts from my electrical contractor, and use them for a sub-frame and using a roller caster (something like
this)to slide the piece on and off the top.