Sorry about the rambling post, to much drinking beer and hanging out last night. I'll try to string something coherent together.......
I agree with Rob, for all of his reasons, and a couple of others.
1. Jet warbirds. Flying, early, jet warbirds, seem to be a rarity. I live in warbird central, and I have yet to see any of them flying. But, everytime I hit up wix bro's for a T-33/P-80 fix, the response is fantastic. In the last couple of months, Ive seen F-86's, T-33's, P/F-80's, F-84's, ect, both here and in magazines, in various kinds of outside storage. I've also seen the projects for sale on places like Barnstormers both here and in Canada. If you look at Scotts list and Jbaughers list, you'll find the opportunity to become a modern day Maloney (I hope I got the name right). Every time I read this guys story, I'm amazed. One of the parts I found most interesting is that he went to tech and trade schools and was able to aquire all kinds of fantastic stuff, some for as little as hauling it off. I've recompiled the lists at least a half a dozen times, I've even researched some of the schools near me. Turns out that some of them have closed, or have refocused their curriculum to geekery, very recently. Excellent opportunities there.
2. One of the most amazing recoveries in recent times happened right here in the US, but not for the reason you'd probably think. That would be the Collings Foundations F-4. I'd like to coin a term, maybe something like, Legislated Recovery, I like that. There are tons of A-4's, F-4's, and most importantly A-6's, out there, just waiting to get back into the sky, and to an Airshow near you. Or to Warbird Adventure's, Stallion 51, just waiting to give you a ride. When I get my A-6 (positive thinking baby), I'm going to get me a congresscritter to legislatively recover it for me. Campaign donations, wix letter writing campaign, a non-profit, I don't care what it takes. At that time my politics become single issue.
3. There are T-6's, T-28's, L-5's, L-19's, Stearmans, ect, everywhere. A walk around the hangars at your favorite airport a few saturdays in a row, is going to turn up all kinds of interesting stuff, all very reasonable. Thats how I found my T-6. There was big chunks of it sitting behind a Bearcat. It all started with,"Whats that?". Recently there was a topic about the Barnstormers yard pics, the ones with all of the T-28's in various locations and various conditions. The topic got around to the condition of some of them. Some of them were in pretty bad condition, I'll grant, but the consensus seemed to be they were borderline worthless, myself included. What I'm getting at is, the folks, including me, who would think they are worthless, maybe rightly so, maybe not, would call a 60 yo P-38 jungle crash victim in a zillion pieces, a masterpiece, and definatley restorable.
4. There are a lot of larger aircraft that are in good condition also. S-2's, PV-2's, Mohawks, ect.
Latin/South America (Non-Dangerous)
Brazil
The Brazillian Navy has 4 P3-04's in crates somewhere. A P3-04 is really a P3-05 with different instrumentation. More info here,
http://www.pilatusp-3.com
El Salvador
This is a great picture, worthy of more research,
http://www.warbirdregistry.org/a26regis ... mages.html
It looks like an A-26, A T-6, and something that looks like a P-51 on the other side of the A26.
Mexico
There are still B-25's down there in various places. There's some info and pictures here
http://www.aerovintage.com/
Other aircraft in differrent places there include A-4's, Dragonfly's, ect...
I know the knocks on Jets. Price, Gas, Complexity, Training. I'll try to answer this all at once in a big sentence/paragraph.
As far as the hours required and training, lets face it, 500 hours is as close as a 1000 hours at this point in my training. I will acomplish both. A case can be made that a T-28 is more complex than a T-33. In fact, it can be said that most big ticket prop birds are more complex than a T-33. I , in my limited experience, have found that a lot of A&P dudes, have more experience and are way more comfortable/familiar working on Jet systems than round engines and pointy noses, thats helpful come restoration time. A nice T-33 should come in somewhere in the neighborhood of a 100k+. A nice T-28 is running 2-300+k. Which gets us to gas. Well, I'm 200k ahead of the game, that I didn't have to pay it to get airborne. 200k is a lot of gas, spread out over many years. As the price of big ticket prop birds goes up, I think you'll see that attitude begin to become more prevalent. Hmmmm, I can spend a mil5 on a P-51, or I can spend 500k on a sweet F-86, put the mil in a bank, and fly off of the interest. If I need a P-51 fix, hell I'm rich, I'll spend a week in Florida flying theirs.
I know I've harped on jets alot, and got off topic, but these birds are a lot closer to the average joe, like me, both physically, and monetarily, than almost any other warbird. I could probably start a T-33 project for less than an L-19. I know I sound like a selfish SOB, but the reason I started flying is to FLY warbirds. I want and hope one day to go to some exotic place and find and recover a big ticket bird. But, lets face it, I, like most of the people here, even if the Navy/NHC handed me a "get out of lake michigan free" card, Or the King of PNG gave me the bonus jungle pass, even on the slim chance I could get together the resources to actually retrieve the plane, when all is said and done, I'd probably end up like the dudes who originally went after the Glacier Girl. Even if I did get it back, the monetary resources and time to restore a big ticket bird, would put me at the same point as the guy who ended up with the Glacier girl, too old and broken down to fly it. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from trying it, I want to do it also. It's just that I think my expectations are reasonable, for me. First and foremost, I want to fly.
I hope this can add an additional way to think about recoveries.
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That is definately the perfered way.....
