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

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

[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?