At 19:42 10 January 2008, Mike Schumann wrote:
Not only can you do damage to the glider when rigging
and derigging, but
there have been numerous accidents resulting from rigging
errors, quite a
few of which were fatal.

If you have the luxury of hangers, you end up with
an inherently safer
operation. Not to mention the obvious advantages of
time and effort that
become more important as we age.

It would be really helpful if we could get one of the
companies marketing
steel hangers to come up with a standard glider hanger
design so that
interested clubs would be able to order economical
hanger kits that they can
either self build, or have erected by a local contractor.

Mike Schumann




I could put interested parties in touch with the designer
of the Scottish Gliding Union hangar and you could
adopt a proven design. It would be hard to come up
with a more space and material efficient design. There
is another one being constructed at an English club
and a second one is being planned for Portmoak making
3 in total. The second Portmoak hangar will probably
have minor changes to the roof height and pitch to
cater for high dihedral wingletted gliders like the
V 2cxT and D2cT. There will also be a gravel floor
rather then the mix in the original hangar and also
detail changes to the door runners.

The design is based around bays suitable for 18m gliders
although, because the two rows of gliders are necessarily
offset, there is one smaller 15m bay and one larger
bay (for Duos) etc at each end of the hangar.

The second SGU hangar will be entirely financed by
individual and syndicate private glider owners but
owned by the club. (All the club gliders are already
housed in the first hangar) The investors will get
16 years free hangarage and trailer parking before
having to pay for their hangar bay. Within that period
they will have the right sell the residual time in
that bay at whatever price they can get for it. A
similar financial model might interest other clubs.

John Galloway