This wasn't some major recovery in the traditional sense. The plane wasn't resurrected from the depths of some obscure lake somewhere or from some forest preserve, but rather from an obscure corner of a little airport in Connecticut.
Nevertheless, on my normal scale of doing things it was a pretty exciting experience.
Around the end of last year I came across an obscure posting (on a firearms forum of all places) regarding this MiG-17 (Polish Lim-6bis) that was languishing away at Danbury Airport in Connecticut. The owner, who was not a pilot, had apparently traded some collectable firearms for the plane a couple of years prior, and he was now "stuck" with this nifty albeit cumbersome conversation piece. His tie down fees had long since lapsed and as a result he had suffered a complete falling out with the airport manager and most of the FBO operators at the field. The MiG had been bounced around to every available corner of the tarmac until the owner had completely run out of favors. He was now in a bind to either sell the plane, move it, or submit to having it scrapped on site.
It turns out this was somewhat of a unique variant of the MiG-17, sporting full ground attack
and photo recon mods. There were even some experimental fuselage mods added that were not native to the MiG-17, which were later incorporated into the MiG-19 series. I decided to do what I could to keep it from being destroyed, so I bought out the owner and put a plan in motion to have it relocated back home to Louisiana.
Once the New England ice storms had passed for the season, I enlisted MiG specialist Greg Shepard to help me disassemble the plane for transport. We finally arrived on site in late June to get it done. We found that the reputation of the previous owner far preceded us, and after being railroaded and grudgingly forced to relocate the plane no less than twice to different areas around the field, we finally found an FBO who could comprehend that the previous owners were now out of the picture. Luckily, I ran into the field’s air traffic controller (thanks Dan!) who by chance was a transplant from my hometown of Longview, Texas! There’s no way we could have knocked out this recovery in a day and a half without Dan kicking the doors open and finding us a “good guy” at the field that would allow us a place to work. It was the one hangar at the field where the owner was laid back and totally accommodating, and once in place we made short work of the process.
With less than two days of labor behind us, we had the plane disassembled and ready to load aboard the flatbed. Here are some shots of some of the action.
P.S. - The plane has now been sold on to a collector in Texas.
_________________
Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.comhttp://www.robmears.com
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nice job on the recovery!
