Warbird Information Exchange

We're talking about taking apart a PBY - an airplane that is 63 feet long with a wingspan of 104 feet, trucking it half-way across the country, and then re-assembling it. Seems to me that it would have been much easier and even cheaper just to pull the engines, props, and control surfaces, repair or overhaul them as necessary, and then re-install them in Miami and fly the whole airplane - if that's really "all" that it needed. They don't have to pay "retail" for the maintenance, especially not through the museum in FL at Tamiami - just send a couple of their own mechanics down there for a week or two at a time to get it done in stages - or hire temps for a short-term contract. That way, it wouldn't still be sitting there 3 years later (Cavanaugh apparently bought it November 2013 according to the current registration.)

I've done similar jobs "on the road" myself, although not on something so big. Did it all the time for one shop where I used to work between 1990 and 2000. As a pilot and mechanic, I'd get dropped off with some tools and spare parts as necessary and was expected to fix my own "ride home" all the time. Once spent a week in Charlottesville VA putting a Piper Seneca back together that had been sitting outside for two years without an engine. Had to re-install the left engine, fix the right engine, replace some engine control cables that had frozen up, etc. Worked by myself for a week before it was ready to ferry (it was obviously out of Annual too) all the while staying each night with some friends who lived about 20 miles away. My self-regulated work ethic really impressed the manager of the local FBO (part of a major national chain.) He offered me a lot more money to come work for him instead, but I wanted to stay in NC. In retrospect....

In any case, IMHO taking apart any aircraft to make it "roadable" is no easy feat. Small parts and hardware get misplaced and lost, more things get damaged inadvertently, etc. And it always takes longer than you expect. It is so much worse with something as large as a PBY too. Keeping it intact and endeavoring to make it flyable seem to me to be a much more positive and incentivizing approach to getting the job done expediently.

Latest Air Classics magazine had an article about a guy named Carlos Gomez of Florida Air Transport Inc. in Miami, coincidentally enough, who took a maintenance crew out to Tucson last year to recover a couple of surplus Convair C-131's. They apparently got them ferriable in very short order without too much trouble and then flew them "home" to Miami. Didn't take 3 years plus - and still counting....

Guess it's too late now - unless the problems it has were actually much worse and they really had no choice.

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From a couple weeks back. It will need some work.

Yanks tried to do that with theirs but the corrosion was too extensive. They had to truck it to Chino.