An Erudite Discourse on the Relative Merits and Demerits of the Various Styles of Hangar Doors

At the WNC Air Museum, the original hangar has sliding doors, big monstrous
steel things sliding back and forth on rollers that are quite functional.
In addition at the new museum hangar, wherein live six beauty airplanes
(including three cherry Stearmans), are doors which rotate outward and are
cranked up and down with a winch and cables. A few insecure bantyweight men
curse them. I like the latter doors because you can build them
economically and they work great, especially if you are big and brawny and
like to show off your prowess for the watchful ladies. Sometimes, though,
you have to adjust the cables with turnbuckles and realign the doors but
otherwise they are quite serviceable. They are counterweighted with huge
tanks of steel shards, and I guess the doors weigh a good 500 lbs. apiece.
Visit this museum and you will see. Free but contributions appreciated.
There are a cherry Curtis Robin in the old museum building, plus Aeronca
Bathtub, 200-hour J-5, E-2 Cub, and a few other rarities there. Don't
forget to contemplate the hangar doors. And maybe even make photos.

At KFQD, surrounded by lush green fields of succulent kudzu, the recently
built small hangars have these 4 sliding doors which when opened hug the
lateral hangar walls. They are a little difficult to open and shut because
you have to push and pull on either end of them to get them to slide around
corners. Nice, though. No complaints except from a few lightweight wimps
with sweaty pink hands.

Now for the hangar wherein resides my darlin' photogenic little Taylorcraft.
This is known as the hangar from hell because the sliding doors are always
jamming against one another, screech so loud from the awful friction they
will bust your eardrums, and the rollers are always trying to come off the
tracks. I have greased and oiled the hell out of them but they still jam
up. I'm thinking of trying some KY. The building is known as a "Walters"
and the rollers have "National" written on them. Avoid these accursed
brand names like you would an anthrax plague. If you have them you will
sooner or later develop a hernia. Even visitors at these hangars have been
known to suffer from huge ruptures in their lower guts from the strain of
just one opening.

Now the new hangar builders at KFQD (also known as Kudzu Intergalactic) are
contemplating the highly praised and respected bi-fold doors, and the big
maintenance hangar owned by Plane Werks (last word of this phrase is
pronounced "verks") is a hydraulically actuated south-facing steel door
which rotates outward and upward into the space above the taxiway, and is
universally awed and admired as an engineering masterpiece as well as a
passive solar collector. It is called a hydro-steel or somethingorother.

Civil comments about various and sundry other hangar doors welcome.

" jls" wrote in message Civil comments about various and sundry other
hangar doors welcome.

In this area, those of us lucky enough to have hangar doors facing downwind
of the storm winds found out that there is no mechanical back-up to the 220
volt motors to open the doors. Some folks couldn't get their planes out when
the second hurricane approached. Those folks with hangar doors facing into
the wind had some bad news. One FBO welded their big hangar doors shut but
they caved in anyway.

D.