Anatomy of an EAA Chapter Hangar / BF Memorial Hangar

[Yooper Rocketman]

Our local EAA Chapter 439 has had a vision for 10 years to build a chapter hangar.  Our local airport management is one of the best in the state of Michigan, always supporting us both in spirit and financially (huge sponsor to our annual airport day event/annual fund raiser).  Our vision is to organize a youth aviation club where we can take on a restoration or kit built project and the young adults that put enough serious time into it can use the plane for flight lessons (after the plane is put in a LLC obviously).  A couple years ago the Chapter board agreed to move forward with the hangar and the airport board and the county board gave us their full blessing and offered us a $1 a year land lease.  We commissioned a local engineer to draft us up blueprints and last summer I got the blueprints approved by our local code commission (not without some fanfare, sucking up, and a back and forth between the engineer and the building inspector before the final prints were approved and the code commission took there considerable fee.  I ordered a Higher Power hangar door but delivery was late enough last fall that closing the hangar up for weather in 2019 was obviously not going to happen.

In late September of 2019, after concern our airport manager was going to be on the hot seat for supporting us and no action,  I pushed our group that we could at least get the concrete poured so in the spring of 2020 we could launch forward immediately with the actual wood construction.  Then, in March/April of this year our world changed; COVID-19.  We delayed based on Michigan rules until late June/early July, then contemplated whether going forward this late would work.  Our membership decided to hold off until 2021.  Then, my 3 guys in my welding/fabrication shop ran out of trailers to build in later August/early September (thank you COVID).  I approached our membership and said I would provide a considerable amount of skilled labor "AT COST" (to keep my guys off unemployment and to give them some rewarding outside work).  The up side, in my view, was my total time on the project, with our membership labor pool being rather small, would likely be considerably less with this type of help.

So here's the concrete work in 2019, with Steve Phillips, my best friend, flying buddy, co-worker on the last 3 years of my Lancair project and flying buddy, bull floating on the third pour.  The concrete work was done October through the first week of November.  Steve died on November 11th, 2019 (Veterans  Day for this Nam Air Force vet).  The hangar will be the the Stephen Phillips Memorial Hangar, a dedication both the airport manager and the county board thought appropriate as well.

The beginning wall work was September of this year.

Tom

To be continued.

[Yooper Rocketman]

We're spanning late September to early October with this next batch of photos.

Tom

[carusoam]

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Way to go Tom and partners!!!

Imagine a Mooney restoration project going on in the corner of that big hangar....    

Did Steve have a favorite plane?

PP dreaming out loud... not making any recommendations...

Best regards,

-a-

[Yooper Rocketman]

The last wall photo is included here as that photo has significance to this post when were we 33% done installing trusses.  The last truss photo is significant too.  I elected to set the trusses with a log truck I had in my used truck inventory (no cost to the chapter) and we installed 2 trusses with 4 men, in 4 hours.  Clearly not efficient!  We determined a lifting fixture would be required for 79' long trusses.  Even with a 15' spreader bar they would flop around enough we thought they were going to break.  The next 11 trusses were set with the same log truck, much safer and more efficient with our custom 40' long steel lifting fixture, but still too slow with the limited height and reach of a log truck.  Those were installed on Wednesday, October 28th, and by Friday I was seeing weather forecasts calling for 35 MPH winds on Sunday.

I called an emergency...... need everyone that's available...... work session to get as much sheeting on the roof as possible on Saturday, and diagonally support the 13 trusses for the expected Sunday wind.  While one chapter member and I were installing sheeting on the west roof line, we had a decent wind blow in from the south and heard a noise and creaking.  We looked up and all 13 trusses were leaning to the north by over a foot!  I thought we were going to flop them all over into the hangar, and turn the wood into toothpicks!  I immediately moved the log truck to the south side of the building, swung the bucket up and stabilized the trusses, and installed a couple 2" ratchet straps from the loader to the end truss to bring it back to vertical.  Upon close inspection, we determined the wind had pulled ALL the screws out of the south wall truss supports.  We re-stabilized all the vertical supports, added more. and then added 4 diagonal supports on the inside.  We then spent the rest of that Saturday, until 1 1/2 hours after dark (thank god for the airport ramp light right next to our hangar) installing many more diagonal supports across the top of the trusses too.

Saturday night I could hear the wind wailing outside my bedroom window.  I could hardly sleep.  I even got up and called the AWOS at our airport and found wind gust were already up to the high 20's.  My wife agreed to go out to the hangar Sunday morning to check on the trusses and we found them solid as a rock .... whew.  But then she looked at the 4 diagonal braces holding the east 18' tall wall, with 200 pounds of cement blocks on the braces, and they were lifting up off the floor 4".  I looked closer and the two middle ones were actually broke.  The wind out of the NW was pushing our 18' hangar wall out over 4".  We made a mad scramble and I moved my scissors lift over so I could install two more ratchet straps to the wall.  Climbing up a 24' ladder, 18' off the floor, on a wall already bowing out 4" from the wind to install the straps was a real challenging moment.  Once secured with the straps, we proceeded to repair the two broken wall supports, installed a ton more screws in ALL the supports, and then rounded up everything that was heavy to lay on those supports.  

She found our roof sheeting, 5/8" OSB, sitting on an 18' flat bed trailer, had the rain protection covering on it flapping so hard it was obvious it wasn't going to stay.  She took a scrap 2' x 3' piece of OSB off that was holding down the plastic, and I thought I was going to lose her with the wind taking her away.  And then once we got the plastic off, we could see the OSB was about to start sailing off.  We needed to strap it down too.  By the time we were ready to leave, we had more sand in our eyes then I can ever remember.

As we drove away my wife noted the light pole next to the hangar was swaying back and forth well over a foot.  On a whim I called our AWOS again for the winds.  35 MPH gusting to 54 !!!!!!  I checked everything Monday morning and we were golden.  I talked with one of my managers at my dealershsip that had a lot of construction experience.  He stated he didn't know a contractor out there that would not have been crapping bullets trying to keep a partially installed truss system up during winds like that.

Tom

[Yooper Rocketman]

So I decided the log truck was too slow and I called in a crane service to install the last 23 trusses.  I also built a bunch of "stand-offs", a guide type of fixture installed on the truss to be lifted and guiding it on to the already secured last truss.  We had worked with just my scissors lift for the first two trusses (a 22' lift unit),  rented a 26' unit for two lifts available on the next 11 trusses, and I got a 32' AND the 26' from the rental store so we had 3 lifts on the final day.  It went awesome.  I had too many pucker moments walking out on those trusses to secure diagonal bracing after every 4-5 had been installed.  That made walking around on sheeting on the roof feel like ground work.

Tom

[Yooper Rocketman]

Sheeting, snow and ice shield, synthetic fabric...... OMG, we started stopping the rain from coming in!!  And then metal roofing.

This thing may get closed up for the winter.

Tom

[Yooper Rocketman]

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.  Hangar door installed (just wiring left), all service doors installed (insluding the 8' x 8' south gable wall service door / sorry no picture yet).  Only project left is to sheet the hangar door and this project is getting put to bed until next spring.

Last picture.... Steve, as my co-pilot on a flight in the Lancair.  Ironically he mentioned in the beginning when most of the work was being done by him and me we should name the hangar the Phillips / Sullivan Hangar.  Little did he know HIS name would end up on the side of it!

Tom

[Yooper Rocketman]

56 minutes ago, carusoam said:

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Way to go Tom and partners!!!

Imagine a Mooney restoration project going on in the corner of that big hangar....    

Did Steve have a favorite plane?

PP dreaming out loud... not making any recommendations...

Best regards,

-a-

Yep.  A beautiful 1964 M20E that I'm prepping right now for sale.

Tom

[RLCarter]

Awesome, our local EAA chapter hasn’t had a meeting since early this year, most of the members are up there in years so it was best we social distance, I just hope the chapter holds together after all this.... curious why you’ll went wood frame vs metal building

[Yooper Rocketman]

13 minutes ago, RLCarter said:curious why you’ll went wood frame vs metal building

One third to one half the price and much more user friendly to finish the inside.    I Have 25,000 SF of steel buildings for my dealership and finishing inside is a total pain.  
 

Tom

[Nick Pilotte]

Love the hangar but I’m digging that crane truck too!  4900?  I’ll bet that will gross about 90k?  I could move some serious logs with that for firewood. 

[Yooper Rocketman]

On 12/6/2020 at 12:19 AM, Nick Pilotte said:

Love the hangar but I’m digging that crane truck too!  4900?  I’ll bet that will gross about 90k?  I could move some serious logs with that for firewood. 

Yep!   

I look forward to meeting you someday.   Pretty crazy, but I would rather meet you than my new WS Sales rep.  And you represent the competition!!!

Tom

[Nick Pilotte]

Oh there’s no competition.  Ours are better! I’m just kidding, each brand has benefits, though ours may have a little tarnish we are recovering from.  But we did just launch the new HX 2 weeks ago and that one MIGHT be some competition up in your neck of the woods.