Island Air Taxi has completed all the upgrades to the Put-in-Bay Airport Hangar. This hangar was originally built to house the Ford Trimotor and was in desperate need of some refurbishing. It had a hard-packed dirt floor, minimal lighting, and an open to the elements entrance. The Put-in-Bay Port Authority put some new siding on the building to improve the outside looks of the airport hangar a couple years ago, but more was needed to make it a usable home base for Island Air Taxi’s air charter operation.
The roof was leaking and sagging a bit and the birds had made their homes inside. This left the dirt floor covered in feathers, pieces of bird nests, and that hard-to-clean digested bird food on everything. The structure itself, however, was still in good shape after all these years. The Port Authority already had planned to re-shingle the roof, but that wouldn’t be enough. Island Air Taxi owner, Dustin Shaffer, met with the Port Authority and came to a great agreement. The list of upgrades would be done at Island Air Taxi’s expense in exchange for a long-term lease on the airport hangar.
Instead of just putting on some new shingles, a new metal roof would be installed with the reinforced structure and a layer of insulation. The interior walls were also reinforced with a layer of insulation as well. Thanks to Scott Pugh with Put-in-Bay Electric, new wiring was installed around the building, along with enough fluorescent lighting to make it look like daylight inside at any time of day. Joe Scarpelli and Travis Kowalski with Fox Stone poured a nice concrete floor. There are not enough good things that can be said about being able to work on the concrete floor versus dirt. Not only did Joe Kostura with Northern Exposure Investments put on the siding, insulation and new metal roof, he installed the massive 13×70-ft. hydraulic door with insulation and metal siding to match.
This hangar was not designed for this door, or any door at all for that matter, so many modifications and several helping hands were needed for this to fit into place, adding man doors and building the framing around it. What tops the cake on this well-insulated, brightly-lit, concrete-floored, sealed building is HEAT! When it’s single digits outside and it’s time for an oil change on a plane, you can’t go wrong with having a heated hangar to work in. Thanks to Jon Scarpelli for hooking up 60-ft. of overhead
propane heaters. Too many people to name, but a huge thank you from Dustin goes out to everyone who was involved in this airport project! And a huge thanks to everyone for their support of Island Air Taxi as well!
