The slowly fading art of flying?and maintaining?Cold War fighter jets | Ars Technica

 

I'm very proud to have had the chance to train in that aircraft. I think the people at the Collings Foundation that I dealt with during that time were true professionals and aviation enthusiasts.

Thanks for posting the link iceman49!

 

I saw a few of these at Perryville, Missouri. We used to fly our Sabre 60 there for maintenance and the hanger had at least 2-3 of these undergoing restoration. One sexy airplane.

 

That's awesome! What year? When did the A4s get retired?



Awesome find! Did not know there was a flyable F4. I think it's interesting that it is much harder to get American aircraft parts than Soviet parts. I could understand defense reasons, but sheesh....but why make it harder to fly American aircraft than foreign???

I've always wondered what a person could procure from AMARC. Even if you wanted to save an airplane to make as a static display. Anybody know? Also, as a Guard guy, can I go out, show my military ID, and just go look around at the planes?

 

I meant that I trained in that particular TA-4J at Collings Foundation.
My first job after retiring was with ATAC to fly their A-4Ls and they sent me to Houston to get my type rating on the A-4. They contracted Collings Foundation to do the training.

Now my IPs at Collings Foundation were former TA-4J IPs from the Navy - to include our very own 'SaltyDog'.

Where are you SaltyDog and why haven't you pitched into this thread???

 

It is very tough to get parts from AMARC. Example: a recent bid for F-4s required a $25,000 deposit, and approved bidders could only bid for certain parts. It noted that whole aircraft would NOT be released.

At that, you might not get any parts!! You have to be the highest bidder! I am assuming you would get your $25k back at the end...

Collings got theirs through an Act of Congress (really). Now it would take a similar act to get any parts, so instead, they have to scrounge the world and pay for them.

The support Collings once had from Congress and the FAA has evaporated, although the FAA is coming back (the warbird movement was seriously threatened about 10 years ago by new regulations and red-tape). The Air Force was always against it.

I know the Chief Pilot of the Phantom from my Air Force days (we were in the same squadron), and hope to wedge my foot in the door someday!

 

Honestly pretty sad link, I've been down there to the desert and it's just sad to see those jets sitting there. Grew up watching the local Guard F-4's flying along with their T-33's. Sad. Miss the smoke from the F-4's.....but it did at least send me on my life's adventure.....

 

Wow, that's a pretty cool story!

 

Paul Wood (owns the Warbird Heritage Foundation based out of UGN) bought two A-4s a couple of years ago. One was to restore/fly, the other was purely a parts bird. Really amazing to see what it took to get the one bird flying.

 

Congress/DoD cracked down on private ownership of taciar, as well as access to parts. Ir was a broad brush, but there were actually some good reasons for it.

A certain ethnic group for example became known as frequent shoppers for F-14 parts at DRMO/AMARG...