F9F Flying?

[marine air]

THe year at Sun N, Fun that he brought the F9F, I sat across the table at a seafood restaurant from Dr. Levine and his girlfriend Jill. It was a big crowd of warbird people and Dr. Levine talked the whole time about his two fighters.
As I recall, he said the FPF cost about $450K to restore which would have bought him another pristine P-51 in those days. It has a lot of compound curves on the fuselage, and it was really expensive and difficult to rebuild the aircraft. The engine was so rare they had to borrow one from a museum, and no one in the world was doing overhauls on them. He used to make claims of having been a Navy combat fighter pilot in them, which later turned out to be untrue.
The thing I remember clearly is that he said while doing those low level passes in the airshow, at sea level, he was burning 600 gallons per hour, and landed at min fuel each day.

[P51Mstg]

It seems like when the Panther was for sale it was $200k or so. I always figured it was a deal.

Mark H

[CH2Tdriver]

[quote="Bill Kistler"]That plane is now located right near the Quonset Air Museum. The QAM people indicated that the Saratoga Museum owns it.




Here is this airplane in much happier days! I got to see it twice. At Scranton in '86 which is where this video I took is from, and at the Manchester show in '91

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N95u-EmbJhQ

Cheers,
Peter

[marine air]

That picture really hurts. When Dr. Levine showed up on the warbird scene, there was a lot of excitement and the thought at the time is that there would be several more jet warbirds on the scene.(especially Navy jets) We all thought we would get to see more WWII and Korean era P-80's, F-84's more Vampires, Gloster Meteors, Panthers and Cougars and even a few F11F tigers. There were already F-86's and T-33's around. Sadly that market has been filled by mostly export jets, although it is nice to see them all at airshows.
Secondly, I hate to see warbirds with N-numbers and clear title going back to the Navy or to non flying museums. That Panther had a ton of good wiring, new sheet metal, all new hydraulics, instrument panel, lots of good stuff. I wish I would have bought it for the $25K it sold for.

[mike furline]

FAA Registry
http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry ... F&PageNo=1
You'll notice the F9F located in Minnesota is a very rare "reciprocating engine" version.

Bu No 123072
http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Na ... 8d61f7b9b3

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Grumman- ... 8d61f7b9b3

[The Inspector]

Both -907 and -908 are powered by reciprocating engines , must be very early experiments into ducted fan technology development

[12XU2A3X3]

the DVHAA at WGNAS own their F9F-2 as i believe came from the hulks mentioned above. no intention to make her a flyer as of right now given the museum situation