Warbird Information Exchange

I understand there are at least 1 each F-16 and F-18 in private hands, does anyone know anything about these and how close they are to flying?

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All I did was press this red button here...

They are not-demilitarized wrecks capable of being rebuild to flight. Would take a huge amount of dollars though. They were advertised for sale around 2000, but have gone off the radar the last few years.

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Magister Aviation
It's all in my book

I know there is an F-18 that came out of Mojave,CA and is in a Dayton, NV storage yard. It would take lots of $$$$$$$$$$$ to make it flyable!

Scott......

The really difficult part would be to get your clam grabbers on all the specific avioics and computers that turn one from a neat piece of lawn art into a flying airplane, and you've got right at less than zero chances of that.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I don't see if happening in the current climate of DoD and Homeland Security paranoia..to say nothing of the FAA approving it.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
Note political free signature.
I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.

JohnB is right. You will never see a private flying F-14 due to DOD paranoia of Iran getting ahold of it for engine parts for their aging F-14 fleet. The DOD went to several museums a few years back and destroyed F-14s that didn't have their engines removed. The F-16 and F-18 are also high performance aircraft that the DOD doesn't want anyone getting their private hands on. I am surprised though that there are a few privately owned F-5s out there and Collings has the F-4 because usually them being able to fly past the speed of sound is one of the reasons also because most ex military jets in the hands of private owners are subsonic.

Uh, no, that is incorrect. That incident had nothing to do with engines. It had to do with the airframes being sold by people in the military that did not have authority to sell them.

But didn't it come down to a fear that Iran would get ahold of them? I had read the ones that got destroyed were ones with engines still in them.

Yes, the ones that were destroyed did, in fact, still have the engines in them. However, that was not the reason they were destroyed. They would have been destroyed even if they didn't have the engines.

Mudge the pedant

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