Are you a cockpiter?

[Hawkeye]

I was wondering how one gets into the collecting of aircraft cockpits, and if any of you guys do it. I've always toyed around with the idea of restoring a cockpit sometime in the distant future, particularly an early RCAF jet, such as a T-33, CF-100, CF-101, or Canadair Tutor. How did you guys get into it, was it overly expensive to aquire said cockpit, and how hard was it to find one to aquire in the first place?

[BHawthorne]

It's very random, you don't just go down to walmart to get one. A couple times a year there are decent catches to be had on eBay, Barnstormes and Govliquidation. You won't really have much choice what you get because it's all so randomly listed. I got mine from Barnstormers. I know there are several projects around $10-20k listed but those are a bit too expensive for my blood.

I would almost just suggest spending your money on the microfilm from NASM and just scratch build a mockup. That way you're guaranteed to get the cockpit you want to do. With export restrictions in place, you're going to be very limited on where you can get a real warbird cockpit.

It took me 5 years to find the F-84F fuselage I have and the F-84F was nowhere on my original list of prefered aircraft to do. I find it a very fun project so far though. If you see something listed that's a cockpit only expect 2-3 more listing to show up that year. It's a take it or leave sort of situation. I decided to buy mine because cockpit sections are not readily available to purchase 90% of the time at an affordable price with complete interiors.

[Fouga23]

Cockpit collecting is especially popular in the UK. It's also easy to get parts for UK jets like Hunters and stuff. There also seems to be a trend to save the cockpit section when an aircraft is scrapped. I myself bought me a Fouga cockpit. Cost me about $1000, but you can add several thousand bucks for parts as French aircraft parts are hard to come by! I've been collecting parts for 10 years and it's still not complete!

[peter]

Cockpit collecting doens seem to be as big here in canada. Just look at Mountainview and all the tutor cockpits that they are cutting into chunks. They are missing out on selling them for decent prices. I mean you cant really think that a 60's era cutoff cockpit would be a threat nowadays?

[Fouga23]

Cockpit collecting doens seem to be as big here in canada. Just look at Mountainview and all the tutor cockpits that they are cutting into chunks. They are missing out on selling them for decent prices. I mean you cant really think that a 60's era cutoff cockpit would be a threat nowadays?

Would love to have a tutor cockpit. Do you have any pictures you can share of this scrapping?

[BHawthorne]

Demand for saving the cockpit and them chopping them up are often quite unrelated. In many cases I've seen the place chopping it up do it in such a way that if they don't want to restore it they make damned sure noone else will be able to either.