"Bill Daniels" wrote

Domes are simply cool.

I remember a proposal for a dome/carosel hangar that stored 8 aircraft.
The aircraft were on a snowflake-like carosel made of 6" steel "C" channel
that also guided the aircraft wheels as they were rolled in tail first.
It rolled on the concrete floor with dozens of ball bearing urethane tired
wheels and rotated about the center of the hangar.

An owner would punch in his combination into the lock and the door would
electrically open as the carosel rotated his aircraft into position to
roll out of the hangar. It would have worked something like an airplane
vending machine.

The claim was made that this was significantly cheaper than T-hangers with
the same ease of access to the airplanes. Cheaper because there was only
one small door for 8 airplanes.

I can see that there could be a real economy of scale, in an arrangement
like that.

Since a dome large enough to hold 8 airplanes would be rather tall, it would
seem like a second story would not be a large problem, either. It could
become a great space for an EAA chapter to hold meetings, and have offices,
and of course, rest rooms, since a rotating floor would not allow for that,
unless they were built at the very center. A building of some type at the
center would be a definite possibility, with the grid rotating around the
central structure.

I wonder how much such an arrangement would cost? Just a cost for the shell
and a concrete floor would be interesting to know.
--
Jim in NC