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Ed_Wischmeyer

Well Known Member
A gorgeous, cool spring day, not a cloud in the sky, light winds, perfect to go practice air work.

Got to the hangar, pushed the Up button on the door controller and... nothing.

Seems as how in the remodeling of the airfield, a contractor was digging a trench and grabbed on to a power line some distance away. Nevertheless, there was enough pull on the wiring to dislodge all the circuit breakers -- the box for 10 hangars is in mine -- and to tear a hole in the hangar wall. And there's bits of plastic on the floor both inside and outside the hangar.

So now somebody has to decide what to do as there are a half dozen airplanes stuck in the hangars, and the building is scheduled to be demolished in a month, so "real" repairs don't make a lot of sense. Talk is that they might put in a generator, but the FBO says that it will have to run 24 hours a day -- which is as it should be.
 
The building is scheduled to be demolished in a month. Do you have a plan to move to a new hangar? Is it available now? If no, then I think the county (or whoever goofed up the dig) is liable to provide power to your current hangar until your replacement is available.
 
The building is scheduled to be demolished in a month. Do you have a plan to move to a new hangar? Is it available now? If no, then I think the county (or whoever goofed up the dig) is liable to provide power to your current hangar until your replacement is available.

My new hangar on the airport is not available at the moment. But I can't get my plane out, so...
 
My new hangar on the airport is not available at the moment. But I can't get my plane out, so...

A trip to the rental yard will solve this.

The panel for 10 hangars is in your hangar, the responsible party should supply a generator wired to that panel so each hangar can go over and start the generator to open and close their door.

It does not need to run 24/7..... very costly. Fix the damage or supply the generator. Or 10 of you individually, file in small claims court for loss of use.
 
I guess it varies from airport to airport but ours has some kind of fork lift with attachment for opening the bi-fold hangar doors when necessary. This might be due to power failure, but up here it's much more often due to the hangar doors freezing closed due to ice melt/freeze. With some of the hangars, pre-flight planning in the winter generally includes a call to brute-force the door open after having frozen shut. We have several vacant hangars, so I solved this recently by moving to a much more modern and better-designed T-hangar
 
Yup, BTDT. Returned from a flight, walked into the hangar through the personnel door, hit the switch and nothing. Seems there was a huge power outage by SoCal Edison.

OK, now we ponder our next move. Our car is in the hangar, our plane is outside the hangar, and we are locked in a commercial airport with no way to exit as all of the gates are electric....

Fortunately, a flight school provided a way to exit the airport and I live within walking distance of my hangar. A friend with a pickup truck picked me up and loaded my 9000 watt generator with his lift gate. Back to the airport, roll the gen back to the hangar and wire it into the door control, lift the door, swap the car for the plane. By then airport security had a single vehicle gate open. What a cluster!

-Marc
 
I thought that most electric hangar doors had a manual crank backup. Very slow, but achievable. No? :confused:
 
My (regional) airport has 70 or 80 T hangars of various vintages. All are steel with electric bifold doors and none have a manual crank of any kind.
 
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