Hello my name is Gil and I’m a local pilot here in Manitoba and recently one of my lifelong dreams came true – I was able to buy my very own airplane. And as anybody who knows who has an airplane the very second thing you’ve got to figure out is where am I going to keep this airplane?

It’s an investment. I want to make sure it’s protected, and hangars are very very hard to find at local airports. Often they’re not building, there’s none available, there’s not even for sale.

So after a few years of renting, a hangar came for sale – this really nice little quonset style hangar.

It wasn’t insulated, and it had very poor electrical but you know what? I checked and the plane fit… just barely. Maybe like four inches from the top of the tail to the frame of the door.

Now this quonset hanger, after I figured out it fit, first thing I wanted to know was “Okay, how do I get in and out?” Because it wasn’t insulated, it wasn’t really made for winter, and it had the old style sliding garage doors which had a track on above and it had posts on the bottom to make sure it guided.

“And then there’s just two by sixes across the floor to keep the door from banging around.”

“This is about nine foot four to the bottom of this, here where the track is.”

“Issues with the door. Kind of… can go right outside.”

“No more padlock. As you can see the doors are just loose in front so we have to leave a trench there. Even this piece was coming loose and you can see right inside the airplane hangar. So having this removed, all the structure will be gone and even these posts that kind of keep the door in place when they’re open. That blue thing was welded and extended because these posts have shifted up vertically.”

“And that’s just held by wood. It’s a very solid structure, but the only thing keeping this closed is just wood sitting in between a little dirt track.”

It worked… till winter came along.

And then I realized I was clearing snow for not only where the door was, but where the door had to slide out of its way.

The tracks would get stiff. The frost would heave. The doors were impossible.

I’m a decent sized guy at over six feet tall, and I often had times where I could not go flying because the doors had frozen in place, or they had iced over, or the track was binding, or the frost had heaved.

So as soon as we finished our first winter, I said, I’m calling Diamond Doors, and I’m getting a quote to get a new motorized bifold door.

It was the best investment I could have ever made.

Not only did I get the door, the exact dimensions they had, but Diamond Doors had actually a really neat solution – a motorized bi-fold door that can fit in front of a quonset.

Because it’s not really an evident problem. You have a rectangular door on a curved building side. How do you even make that work?

Diamond Doors told me it’s not an issue.

They actually have a metal header frame system. They can give you all the details about it, but essentially, it’s self-standing.

It’s a steel girder truss system that supports everything that the door does, and that is just leaned up against the hanger.

Now, the neat part was, because the quonset is strong because of its shape, the front wall really didn’t do much other than just block the wind from coming in. Diamond Doors was able to actually give me even more opening.

So now I have a full 10-foot height opening between the floor and where the door goes because it folds up and out of the way.

And because all of the hardware on the Diamond door is on the outside of my hanger, as the mechanism goes up and the door opens, everything’s to the outside, not to the inside, so I don’t lose any space internally.

Couple other things I said, “I need it insulated.”

They said, “We got you covered.”

I said, “I’d love to have some windows because it’s pitch dark in here when I’m not here”

…“We got you covered.”

So they put windows in there as well.

And one thing that I got – that I’m super happy I did – is they also have an auto-lock mechanizing system.

So whenever you have motorized hangar doors, somebody presses the button, you hold the button and the door opens up, and then you get the plane out, and then when everybody’s out of the way, you get the door back down. Very very common stuff.

My issue is that when I take the plane out, I often have my passengers here and I’m also the pilot and I have to watch out for them. So every time I pulled the plane out, I would either have to have them loitering around outside the plane while it’s pushed out onto the taxiway, and I had to go in back behind them and close the door, or I have them waiting in the plane unattended and I have to go back inside the hangar and close the door.

Passenger safety and being able to open and close the door without me getting out of a running airplane, which is not doable, or having passengers come do it, which is not safe, or me leaving them outside alone in the plane while I come back to slide these sliding doors, none of those were viable safe solutions for me.

Diamond Door said we have a motorized latching system.

What will happen is as the door closes, it secures.

Not everybody has these on these bifolds. You have this lever and you close the door and you lock it in place, but you have to be in the hangar to do that every time.

They have a motorized option – it’s a bit of an upgrade but well worth it in my opinion.

What they do is that latching mechanism is now motorized, meaning you can get an optional little garage door opener remote, keep it in the airplane or in your vehicle, press the button and the door opens from outside without having to send somebody in to unlatch and do all the latching mechanism.

So the safety of having the auto lock really is a huge plus.

Plus when we’re flying in late, arriving at night, it’s dark, I can literally pull the plane right up in front of the hangar, press the button, the auto lock mechanism unlatches, opens the building, and the hangar door starts going up all on its own.

It’s also got infrared beam sensors, so if anybody runs across the door while it’s closing, you’re protected there because it immediately stops the door.

So from a safety perspective, from a convenience perspective, and let’s face it’s so much nicer than having to run in and out every time I open and close the door.

Now when my passengers are kind of loaded, ready to go in the plane, normally I go back inside, close hangar doors get that all set up but I’m leaving them in the plane without me because I don’t want them running the door.

Well, with the remote, I can now just literally have everybody in the plane and press the button and the doors start closing themselves. I don’t have to actually go back out there and get everybody. Plane is secure, the hangar is secure, we just kind of proceed. Love the door.

As you can see behind me, once the door is all the way up, all of the hardware is actually on the outside of the hangar, so it’s not taking up any space on the inside.

And as an added benefit on a nice, hot, sunny summer day, it makes for a pretty cool awning for the entrance of our gazebo, where we can just kind of enjoy the sunset and talk about the flight we just had.

Another little cosmetic thing was this quonset hanger I bought was green.

An old forest green. Not my choice, but that’s what it was.

And Diamond Doors said, “No problem, we have colors to pick from,” and they were able to match the color almost perfectly.

So now I have an old quonset style building that’s about to get insulated, but now has a giant bi-fold door that’s remote controlled, it’s safe, it’s secure, it’s solid, and I now have daylight without having to always have the lights on.

So I’m a big fan of Diamond Doors, give them a call, they’ll have a solution for you, I guarantee.