Warbird Information Exchange

I wonder if Dale (Snort) Snodgrass could be enticed to fly a civilian owned Tomcat? IIRC he has more time in the Tomcat than anyone? What with the F-86 issues and having to fly boring old stuff like the Jim Read's Corsair and Mustang, I would think that he would at least consider the possibility of climbing into a Tomcat office again?



(oh by the way...I don't see a Tomcat ever flying in civilian hands either)

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Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

He was actually leading a charge not too many years ago to get something like 9 or 10 of them to fly on the warbird circuit.

I had never heard that Randy...thanx for the info. I still think that the F-15 is a much better looking plane than the Tomcat...would you consider flying mine for me after I win the lottery next week?

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Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

Thanks, Randy. The current official number is that it costs about 8000.00 per hour to fly the F-4. Factor in a fodded engine and the subsequent replacement and the cost certainly goes up until we start flying the resulting amortization off. That's one of the intangibles but hard costs are certainly going up. The plane burns roughly 100 lbs of fuel per minute, at 6.8lbs per gal that's 14.7 gallons per minute at about 4.51 per gal. We can also translate that to 20 lbs per mile plus reserve for flight planning purposes, of course then we correct for relative wind so that can go up or down according to circumstance. In any event we're looking at about 3 gal per mile.

On the subject of Tomcats, Snort told us about the time that the F-14 proposal went south that he was asking for 14 Tomcats, two to fly and the rest for spares. He was working on a sponsor and the Navy to have these aircraft available as emergency patrol spares in order to ease the flying hours on frontline types. This would be in a CONUS patrol situation after a 9-11 type of event. If they weren't needed in that fashion then he would fly airshows with them. The potential sponsor apparently got cold feet at the highest level before the idea was cancelled. From what he said he believed the reason for killing the idea was the reserve combat aspect.

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

I thought he was working on the "civilian aircraft carrier' to land them on first. .... lololol

"Neemeetz? Wot ees Neemetz? Oh, U-S-S Neemeetz! I want eet, I want to buy eet, I want to land my 747 on eet!"

(and I can't believe that I still remember tha movie quote after all these years ...)

Honestly, I don't think we will ever see civilian jet flyers ever again as current aircraft are retired.

I believe that there's 3 Mig-29s on the civilian roll, but no airworthiness cert issued. The Mig-23 is Joe Gano's, at New Castle, DE. He has a second one that's for sale, I think. He flies often on Sundays, and in this case, at the Oct 2006 New Castle Airshow. Here's video on my website:

http://www.crystalgraphix.com/general/video.htm

Best,
Rich

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Rich Kolasa
www.crystalgraphix.com

I was over at AMARG today so I asked my escort what was left of the Tomcats, there is a grand total of 2 intact F-14s left. Everything else has been sent through the chippers and into the smelter or is in the process of being reduced to little bits for scrapping. We went to look at the remains and I'd say all of 'em except the ones on Celebrity Row will be gone in a couple of weeks. Of course there is something like 90 of them on display around the country so there isn't a shortage of survivors.

James

They sent them through the chippers so fast so that there would be no temptation to bring them back. Might be the record for destroying a specific type. Heard they were supposed to keep the later models for war reserve, guess someone vetoed that idea.

By comparison, some of the last TA-4s ( in service until Dec 1999 ) are still held in war reserve status !

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Im just glad I got to see the Tomcat fly quite often. I loved that deep buzz sound it had in high G afterburner.

I first fell in love with the plane when I got the book "The Cutting Edge" as a kid.

Wow, that's amazing (and sort of sad) that the entire fleet was scrapped at AMARC that fast! I had no idea about that...

Do we really know that to be true? Did EVERY airframe make it to AMARC? I was under the impression that there were some at Oceana that did not make it to AMARC.

A few feet away from a full burner night cat shot was sorta cool

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Don't touch my junk!!

Does anyone know the fate of the ones that were siezed from Chino a year or so back? Did they end up getting scrapped too?