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!"

Comments

Re:Assembly AND Military Experience Required

[chia_monkey]

Well...there ARE plenty of ex-military pilots out there. How many have $9 million is beyond me.

I wonder what the legalities of such are. The government imposes rules on exporting software and supercomputers to other nations. Can you really buy a current military plane? Can someone buy it without a background check? Kinda scary actually...

Flight Hours on Airframe

[DaRat]

3700 odd flight hours, many of Blue Angels type maneuvers. Probably some significant stress and wear on that airframe due to the type of flying. There probably was a good reason that aircraft was retired.

Also, the article should have read "F16 Fighting Falcon" for one of the upcoming aircraft, not "F16 Hornet"

If you have the cash...buy it assembled

[SquierStrat]

Being a aviation mechanic for the Marine Corps, I'm going to tell you that you want hte thing flight worthy...the assembly isn't something you would want to tackle yourself. In short: it's a bitch.

And to the person doubting you could get an LOA for it...that's crap. The question is would you want to fly it?

How are they serious?

[lostchicken]

Looking at the minimun bid of $1 mil, that means that there have, so far, been 7 people willing to fork over $1,000,000 for something. Now, looking at the feedback for these people, I can't possibly see how some of them could pay for this. wtmahan has bought repair manuals for a 1995 Nissan Protege. Anybody who drives one of those, and wants to fix it him/herself probably cannot afford an F/A-18. The current high bidder has bought a bunch of shirts and a $15,000 Porche, not cheap, but not a car for a person who can spend $1mil on an airplane kit.

Re:How much longer...

[bluekanoodle]

While I agree we see a lot of these types of stories on ./ this one seems worthy of the front page. It's not everyday that you can buy a fighter jet on the internet.

It's been said the Internet is the great equalizer, a single man can be as big as a large corporation, but this levels the playing field at the nation building level. :) At least it can bring you equal to many 3rd world country's Air forces.

Dangerous toys

[paiute]

I know (or knew) a rancher who rebuilt a Mustang. He used to fly it over his cattle drives on occasion to keep an eye on things. One day the cowboys saw him fly it straight into the side of a hill. Not only was he rendered into many tiny pieces, but an irreplacable piece of American aviation history was lost forever.

Men have this fascination with warbirds - both prop and jet. The problem is that these things were designed - especially the old WWII birds - to fly just this side of stable. Airspeed, altitude, and maneuverability were prioritized over forgiveness. Even well-maintained aircraft flown by pilots with many hours all too often augered in. That was the price the military knew they would have to pay to get the job at hand done.

Now we see weekend amateurs with too much money flying these things, when they should be flying Cessnas.

Re:Dangerous toys

[delcielo]

The truth is that many of the kids who flew these in practice (especially the old warbirds like your mustang) had fewer hours than a lot of current pilots.

It's all about the training and discipline. Getting good education and training, and then having the self discipline to follow those things as well as the normal "rules" of aviation. In other words, just because you have a mustang and know how to fly it, that doesn't make it safe to do low-level passes with your attention diverted to things on the ground. That was true when the airplane was flown in combat, too.

The area that most new warbird owners seem to get into trouble on is fuel exhaustion. None of these birds really have large stores of fuel unless they have their external tanks with them. Kind of gets back to the discipline thing. You would want to keep in mind that unless you were an airshow pilot, the airplane just wouldn't be very useful.

this will go well with my aircraft carrier

[Bhull]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ewItem&category=26432&item=2454839870

Re:Pepsi will buy it...

[Alan Partridge]

What does "better"mean, exactly? Both are brilliant 'planes, but the Hornet (while a more high performance machine) didn't break ANY engineering ground with its design.

Sheesh look at that feedback

[boobert]

I don't think I would go spending a million bucks knowing this seller doesn't have 100% feedback.

Re:Assembly AND Military Experience Required

[M1FCJ]

When you are flying, it's the weight that counts.

Re:Assembly AND Military Experience Required

[jhunsake]

(The lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math)

Not always. Frequently (enough) the expected payout goes above the purchase price. This is especially true of the big ones such as PowerBall.

Re:Assembly AND Military Experience Required

[Alan Partridge]

Yep, coz Boeing has no dealings with the US govt. at all.

Are you insane?

BTW, is this the same marketplace that the US DOESN'T ALLOW the Japanese to compete in?

Re:Assembly AND Military Experience Required

[cayenne8]

Actually...I consider myself pretty much in the middle...leaning slightly right on financial issues.

I never cared what Clinton did to get out of the war..it was very common for that war, especially after people discovered the kind of war it was, to try to do everything within their means to get out of it. Bill went the scholar/travelling way...Bush did the Nat'l Guard..etc. Heck, my Dad got out of it due to college too I think. So, I don't really hold any of that against anyone. I do have problems with Clinton after he lied while in office in a court of law...

But, to re-iterate, I don't think things these guys did while young idiot men (like we all are at 20+) should have much to do with their qualifications today. That was my main point....

ps. What is a non-con? Is this similar to a neo-con? I've seen these thrown around everywhere, and don't understand what it is...tia.

$8,100,500.00 and counting...

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I've been tracking the item for the past 10 minutes while reading this thread. The last two bidders (of 150 total) have been a person whose eBay experince seems to center around trading Playstation games, and someone from Canada who seems to primarily buy nerd-esque items on a regular basis.

It's enough to make one think that there's some bid-jacking going on by people who aren't taking this seriously at all. Perhaps an eBay "Slashdotting" of sorts? :-)

It'll be interesting to see what, if any, cleanup is needed to identify a real buyer after the auction closes...

Maintenance goes by time and hours.

[annisette]

As a airplane's cycles increase (takeoff+landing)there are maintenance requirements. As engines aquire hours of opperation maintenance is required.

However there are "time" maintenance requirements. This means your jet can stand idle in your hanger for lets say a couple of years (est.) and it is time for manditory landing gear rebuild, avionics can be in the 6 month time range.

You may save fuel by not flying it much but the cost to keep it flyworthy is "almost" as eexpensive if it is in the air or not.

Keeping it flyworthy (for flight at any time) is the key word here.

I worked on a SAAB 380 twin turboprop, 2.5-3 mil used (I cleaned the interior, carpet, leather seats, glass. A great job, ANY airplane is totally cool) a 19 seater (20 seats and you need a steward-stewardess-FAA) and the landing gear rebuild was about $300,00.00.

My guess for a F-18 yearly maintenance would be easily 100 million pennys a year, plus fuel and ground support when flying.

And if I remember correctly the F-18 does not have a long range especially supersonic probably an hour or so if flying slow.

a jet plane to get is a Chek trainer or a mig-17, all airplanes rock:)