Very simple buildings. The one at my home (Sunflower Gliderport, Hutchinson, KS) was put up in 1974. Ours is simple pipe trusses, two vertical columns as shown in the drawing, with X bracing, with simple horizontal pipe lower member of the truss (not the more complex, larger beams in the later photo). We have since added removable cables that go from the end of the truss down to the ground, to keep the building from twisting in the wind and letting the doors flop into the hangar. We also added pipes sticking down from the upper door track, at roughly 1/3rd of a door length apart so that if a cable fails and the building twists, the door will still be captured by two of those pipes.

The doors are on two tracks (there are "inside" and "outside" doors). A 4 inch, heavy "C" channel anchored to the ground. The top door guide is a simple pin in a guide track. Any door (except the end ones which, of course, can only roll toward teh center and then back) can be pushed either direction, until you run out of space. Max opening on our 200 foot long hangar is about 90 feet.

Our building is 200 feet long, and I think 40 feet wide. A little more width wouldn't hurt, as it would be tough to put a plane like a Duo or an Arcus in, due to its longer fuselage and interfrence with the wing of the plane on the other side of the hangar. Between 45 and 50 would be better. Our door panels are 21 feet long, with one foot of overlap to the adjacent door for keeping the wind and rain mostly out. I think our building is sothing like 14 foot high doors (more than is needed, but sized to clear a Cessna 310 with a flat nose strut, I believe).

If you have access from both sides, it is probably the cheapest way to get into a big hangar that can hold a lot of planes! If you would like some detailed pictures of our hangar, let me know and I can get them this weekend.

Steve Leonard