Warbird Information Exchange

An old add from Barnstormer....Any info on which AC this is ?

ATTENTION MUSEUMS! P-51D MUSTANG • AVAILABLE FOR SALE • 1ea. P-51D Mustang aircraft restored by a museum for museum display, will be offered for sale to another 501 C3 museum. Aircraft is undergoing restoration at this time and will be excess to the museum's collection. Serious inquiries only. $250K / $350K price range. • Contact Ed Kaleta - KAL AERO SERVICE, INC. located Dulzura, CA USA • Telephone: 619-468-3759 • Fax: 619-468-3579 • Posted February 3, 2006 • Show all Ads posted by this Advertiser • Recommend This Ad to a Friend • Send a Message

I've seen that add before too and always wondered what the history on it was.

Is that $250K-$350K as of right now before the restoration or is that how small of a restoration it is.

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The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. - Gus Grissom

Must have some strings attached. Maybe from a trade with the USAF for the B-24?

The P-51 in question is being rebuilt at the Pima Air & Space Museum. It is a mix of original and newly fabricated parts and is being done in accordance with the original factory drawings. It will however not be flyable which is why the price is so low. The idea was why park a flyer when you can build a nearly identical one with nonairworthy parts. We are actually doing several of them to keep and sell or trade. Here is a link to some relatively recent photos. It is actually rather farther along now.

http://www.pimaair.org/index.php?option ... =252#P-51D

James

Thanks for the info and photos James. Why the limitations to a 501 C3 museum?

I'm not sure why it says that. We'll sell to anybody whose check clears. I think that when the add was written the assumption was that only another museum would be interested in a static Mustang. As it turns out most interest has come from other areas. Also I think it was an attempt to emphasize the fact that these are for static display and can't be made to fly. Convincing some people that non-airworthy really means "don't even think about flying it if you like breathing" has been the most frustrating thing about this project. The serious people haven't been a problem, but there have been a couple who thought we'd be dumb enough to sell them a potential flyer for 300K.

James

What is non-flyable about it? Is it being rebuilt with non-A/N parts, or pot metal, or what?

With P-51 *wreckage* selling for $100,000 these days, there's not really such a thing as a "non-flyable" airframe anymore.

While we are using the correct grades of aluminum we are not having parts that need heat treating done and we're shooting softer rivets than are called for. We are not installing electrical or hydraulic systems other than the parts that can be seen from outside the plane, like in the wheel wells. The Merlins we are going to put in them have been built up from run out parts.

I suppose that if someone wanted to drop an extra $800K on top of our purchase price they could make one of these fly, but at that point why not just buy one of the ones other people are building to fly from the start. These are perfect for museums that don't fly their planes but want to display a Mustang and don't have the money to buy and then park a flyer.

James

Interesting... "Them" suggests more than one?
Yes, thank you for that. We don't need more perfectly good flying airplanes to end up on display in a masoleum like Stalin or Mao.

Do these come with a pedigree? What was the source of the airframes?

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I'll ignore the 'mausoleum' crack. We have enough parts to do three Ds one B/C which were going to do as a malcolm hooded RAF Mustang III and we also acquired the remaining wreckage and spares from Red Baron and we'll be doing a replica of it. We will be keeping a D the B and Red Baron. The original parts have come from many sources, mostly people who have had non-flyable parts left over from other restorations. No single airframe has supplied enough parts to assign a particular serial number to anything. So whoever buys them can call them whatever they want.

James

Did I say "masoleum"? I must have meant "museum"!

Sounds like you'll have your own Mustang roundup over there! Please bless us with photos on occasion.

I must say that this is a great idea. I’ve heard of non-airworthy parts being lost tossed or just plain scrapped. It’s a great idea to save them to put museum examples together. Lets hope that this starts happening with other types as well.

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