Meacham Field ,Ft. Worth Texas, Collings Tour April 1-4

[pjpahs]

I will be in Texas at this time and will visit V.F.M. and as an added bonus the Collings Tour will be at Meacham. Their ME. 262 will join them as per the Collings website. I used their website to see the map and when I went to satellite view I noticed an airliner in the grass N.W. of runway 17. What is it and why is it there? It looks to have the doors off. Fix it up, add utilities, an observation deck and rent it as a Bed and Breakfast. I would spend a few days there.

[The Inspector]

I see an engineless MD-80, a DC-3/C-47 wrecked fuselage and a couple of ALLISON 540's being picked apart as major sized chunks scattered around.

[K5DH]

I see an engineless MD-80, a DC-3/C-47 wrecked fuselage and a couple of ALLISON 540's being picked apart as major sized chunks scattered around.

The Google photos are old. In the image that comes up first via the Collings link, if you surf southward down the airfield to where VFM is located, you'll see FIFI parked on our ramp! The zoomed-in images are even older; you can still see aircraft from our former tenants, the Veterans Memorial Airpark and OV-10 Bronco Ass'n (who now have their own facility at the very southeast corner of the airport property).

The DC-3 fuselage is gone. The perennial eyesore MD-80 has been moved to someone else's ramp. The two Convairs are RR Dart-powered 640 freighters (formerly of Kitty Hawk Air Freight) that were donated to VFM. They have been parted out and are now just empty hulls. An Australian operator paid us a handsome sum of money for the rights to strip the Convairs. They came with a crew of workmen and several seagoing freight containers, and they took everything useful from the old Convairs (except for the VERY complete forward fuselage and cockpit from one of them, which we did not include in the deal; it's stored in our warehouse and is slated to become an interactive display). As soon as we figure out how to best accomplish the task, the hulls will be cut up for scrap.