Gliding in Germany - leisure activity and sport at the same time. Gliding can be learnt and practised in around 900 gliding clubs of the German Aero Club (DAeC) in Germany. There are also dozens of commercial flying schools throughout Germany. Flying is permitted at authorised gliding sites in Germany. These are mostly maintained and looked after by the local air sports clubs. If you want to take off into the air, you need a gliding licence in addition to the actual aircraft. The fascination for this leisure sport remains unbroken despite the high financial outlay involved. The challenge of gliding lies in the art of covering long distances by skilfully exploiting the thermals - without an engine.
In contrast to commercial aviation, where aircraft have to be permanently in the air to be economically viable, gliders are taken out of the hangar when the weather and thermals are good. Commercial aeroplanes are usually parked outside overnight. Gliders should ideally be stored in locked hangars, also to prevent vandalism. Or they can be dismantled on site and transported to an airfield in a transport trailer. The gliders are designed in such a way that they can be dismantled into a few individual parts such as wings, fuselage and tailplane in just a few minutes. So if you have space at home, you can dismantle your glider and store it safely on your own premises. Where this is not possible, there are hangars in which gliders that have not been dismantled can be stored. However, the dimensions of a glider require a lot of space in the hangar. A standard class single-seater, for example, has a wingspan of 15 metres and a fuselage length of 6.5 metres. For two-seaters, the wingspan is already around 20 metres and the fuselage length is around 7.5 metres. In other words, these are not small aircraft that you can just put in a corner. In addition, modern gliders today are made almost exclusively from high-quality plastics such as carbon fibre and glass fibre composites. The fuselage and wings are made entirely of GRP or CFRP. This is why the prices for gliders start at 70,000 euros and go up to six-figure sums. It should therefore be avoided at all costs to hit anything with the gliders when parking them in and out of the hangar. Of course, clubs also have to pay attention to costs when building hangars, which is why the space under the hangar roof is now often used to accommodate additional gliders in addition to the ground parking spaces.
In 2022, Flugsport-Club Schwandorf built a new hangar to house the gliders of its club members. From the outset, the hangar's utilisation concept included the suspension of individual gliders below the hangar ceiling on a monorail system. This allows the flying club to park four more gliders under the hangar roof in addition to the gliders parked on the hangar floor. The customer's specifications included, in particular, compliance with all safety and insurance requirements as well as various customer-specific requests. The relatively low trolley runway height of 3,850 mm combined with the desire to realise a clearance height of 2 m posed particular challenges. Another point was the different types of aircraft, which have different spans and centres of gravity depending on their equipment, which meant that the adjustment options for the load beams were of great importance. In addition to its own 400 volt power supply, each hoist is also equipped with a further 230 volt supply, which enables the aircraft batteries to be charged even when the crane systems are switched off. In addition to a normal lifting process in crane operation using load handling equipment, this project also required a safety solution to prevent both the lowering of the load (of the glider) and the rotation of the gliders in their final position. In the end, the customer received a complete solution including installation.
The load traverse, which is controlled by an electric chain hoist, is equipped with four textile straps, which are fitted with textile lifting straps including protective hoses at the end via shackles. These are looped around the fuselage before and after the wings. In addition, two support wheels are temporarily fitted to the wings of the gliders during lowering to prevent the wings from coming into contact with the ground.
Does the glider have to be completely in the hangar to lift it?
No. The monorail crane runway runs centrally along the entire length of the hangar and also 3.5 metres on each side into the outside area. Accordingly, the gliders are always driven to the outside area by means of a trolley drive when in use and lowered there or picked up again after the flight.
The load beam is equipped with an adjustment mechanism that can be used to set the centre of gravity of each aircraft type. This ensures that a wide variety of aircraft types can always be adjusted so that the crossbars do not have an angle of inclination of more than 6° when raised. To additionally counteract the possible effects of gusts of wind in the hangar, the trusses are lifted into specially designed safety frames, which also prevent the aircraft from tilting or twisting.
What does such a complete suspension solution cost?There is no general answer to this question. Every hangar has different dimensions. An on-site inspection is therefore absolutely essential before submitting a quotation.
