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Navy Jet eBayed - Some Assembly Required?
madmancarman writes "The world's only F/A-18 Hornet in private ownership, formerly a Navy Blue Angel Jet, is for sale on eBay. The initial asking price? $1 million unassembled, or $9 million assembled and certified airworthy 'with your choice of paint' - more info is available via a Yahoo News story. I wonder how much it would cost to fully arm it? The same person selling the F/A-18 is also selling a 1950's T-33, and claims they'll soon be auctioning off an F-16 and a Mig-29 as well. Build your own air force for fun and profit!"
While owning a Blue Angel would be awesome, it's unlikely a civilian would actually get any flight time in such a vehicle. To fly it, you'd need a Letter of Authorization because there's no FAA type certification for this aircraft - and unless you're an ex-military pilot, you've basically got no chance of getting an LOA.
Even if you were to get an LOA, to fly it you'd have to get permission from the FAA to put it in the air every time you take off. So add your own private island to the total cost if you actually want to fly it without hassle.
So unless you're ex-military, you'd have yourself a $9 million lawn ornament.
Hmmmm. This sounds like the owner might have been Larry Ellison. There have been a number of Mig-29's available in private hands over the years as well as a couple of F-104 Starfighters. I don't know if Larry owned an F-18, or an F-16 but I talked to him at a Java conference (at least I'm pretty sure it was Ellison) years ago and he expressed an interest in obtaining fighter jets like the Mig-29. Someone told me that he recently married, so perhaps his wife would rather he not go "jetting off" and would like him to calm his lifestyle a bit?
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Duh. The tri-foil on the nose cone is warning about the radiation from the radar, not from nuclear weapons.
"If you are close enough to read this, the nukes had better not be going off just yet."
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Actually 3700 flight hours is fairly small for a plane of this age. Most commercial planes have a 20,000 operating hour overhaul schedule.
is tihs. Not quite flyable condition...;)
Yes, it can be put back together. But no, it's not in 'fly-away' condition.
There are several ex-military jets in private hands. F-4's, F-86's, etc. And you can just return it to weapons capable status. *All* of the fire control circuitry will have been removed. And without that, a missile won't launch in anything other than a randowm direction, if at all.
Given the restrictions on actually flying ex-military aircraft, it would be easier for a purported terrorist to drop a case of TNT out the door of a Cessna.
Not at all - the maintenance schedule on military aviation is extraordinarily rigorous, because of the type of flying that is done and because much of the equipment (for its time) is cutting edge, at least mechanically speaking.
The maneuvers that the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds do are the same maneuvers that all of the pilots of those aircraft perform. It's just that the demonstration teams perform them as a group. My old naval aviation buddies tell me that the Blue Angels' jets actually get easier use than the regular jets. They certainly don't have to make any arrested landings or catapault takeoffs!
-h-
After the wall fell, one of the airplane magazines had an article on one of the older MIGs (don't remember which model). At the time, you could pick them up for fairly cheap (well, cheap for being a jet). Since getting spare parts was some what difficult if even possible, the magazine recommended that if you REALLY wanted a MIG, buy two just so that you have spare parts.
Another thing that I remember from the article, the jet on that MIG had a really slow spool up time. This meant that when you pushed the throttle to full, it would take the engine a while before it produced full power. This becomes a problem if you have to do a missed approached or abort a landing. This meant that when you landed that MIG, you would push the controls to full throttle before the wheels touched down, just in case. This is the same thing that planes do when landing on a carrier. But it seemed strange to do for a ground based runway.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
knots is a naval unit measured by a number of knots on a rope that's trailing the ship in a given time period.
Where did you hear that?
A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is one minute of latitude (1/60th of a degree of the Earth's circumference -- 6076 feet, versus 5280 feet for an English mile).
Regardless, the FA-18 was undoubtedly built to take a good bit more stress than a Cessna. I can't see why the airframe would necessarily be any bit the worse for wear after so few flight hours, so long as it wasn't pushed past its limits (which I doubt the Navy would tolerate on a multi-million dollar piece of equipment like that).
The issue is not the tonnage of the carrier but rather how many pounds the catapult can shoot to takeoff speeds.
The French Clemenceau or newer DeGaulle class carriers are entirely capable of operating F18s, although not particularly efficiently due to deck space limitations. However you'd have to refit them by upgrading the catapults and putting arresting gear in that can stop a 40,000 pound plane. And of course only one country in the world has a company that makes equipment capable of handling a F18 for arrested landing. So unless you know a guy who can build cats in his backyard shop you are SOL.
You can frequently find surplus Government jets and jet engines on GSA Auctions. There aren't any up right now, but you will find a few buses and boats and some nice jewelry. You never know where some of this stuff comes from - foreign gifts are sold without attribution to avoid state embarassment. A while back, we sold the Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa featured in "The Perfect Storm."
maybe, but the story I got from a friend on the scene was, years ago, China was selling some of it's older aircraft for dollars and a gentleman from SoCal bought one, a MIG-15,for about $100k. Not a bad price when you consider that a P-51 airframe runs twice that. The day (and Plane) arrives and our hero gets a panicked call from the freight company to get his azz down to the docks. Our Asian buddies had sent the plane with the wings detached....with the CANNONS , RACKS AND ORDINANCE STILL ON BOARD. Trying to explain this to the Customs guys (one of which was my buddy, rolling on the dock in hysterics) was the high point of this dude's year. (And yes, they let him have the plane, after he stripped ALL the offensive gear of it, dockside.)
I want revenge. I'll settle for justice. Mercy is optional, but not very.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=4672&item=3079057375
The price is now $29M + $9M to assemble it.
What a bargain!