"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"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.

Monolithic domes need not be spheres - they can be oblate spheroids
therefore not as tall. A 2nd story could really be nice though.

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.

Actually, the floor doesn't rotate, just a spider frame made of 6" channels.
An additional suggestion was made to make each airplane position slightly
uphill so the airplane would roll out of the hangar powered by gravity. An
electric winch attached to the tail tiedown point would pull it back in -
and allow it to slowly roll out.

I wonder how much such an arrangement would cost? Just a cost for the
shell and a concrete floor would be interesting to know.
--
Call one of the dome vendors for an estimate.


Bill Daniels