F-86's under restoration to fly?

[Sully]

As to "Minute Men":
Pic on pg 15 would indicate bare metal.

http://sabre-pilots.org/pdf/sjc171.pdf

Sully

[dfrat]

Check out the cover of this SJC mag from Fall 2005. I'd say it was rather shiny, you can see the airplane next to it in it's reflection. Looks like a T-33.


http://sabre-pilots.org/pdf/sjc133.pdf

[bdk]

Yanks had a nice one fly in a couple of years ago. It flew one more flight with Yanks and I think has been parked ever since.

[corsairkid]

Is alu-min-i-um a beautiful material, or what?

[JDK]

The short list of fliers:
...
FU-178 Golden Apple Operations UK, A model
...
A94-983 CA-27 Avon Sabre - Black Diamonds Temora Museum Australia
...

Really appreciate your listings dfrat. Just a couple of constancy points, I'd suggest using either serial or (current) civil reggo, rather than any other ID as those are often not unique or original to that aircraft. Also the UK A model, the oldest Sabre and only A flying is G-SABR, 48-0178, and if you list them in serial number it sorts by age and to some degree model.

G-SABR is IWM Duxford based, but as you say, operated by Golden Apple. If listing like that, A94-983 (its original RAAF serial) is based and operated by the Temora Aviation Museum (TAM) at Temora NSW, but is owned by the RAAF / RAAF Museum, an important point here. The scheme is a 75 Squadron RAAF one, and it's reggo is VH-IPN, a special registration, obvious to Sabre operators.

Hope that helps!

[Moonlight]

I'm not sure that's over polished on a Minute Men jet. I know the intakes were EXTREMELY highly polished (if not chromed) on their F-86's and I'm pretty sure they polished the rest of the jet as well.

Either way, there is a huge difference between chrome and polish. That is polish.

BTW, here's the only "good" picture I can find of the Minute Men, you can tell that the intake and rudder are definitely polished, but because of the quality of the image, it's hard to tell if the rest of the plane is.

So glad we have everyone's approval. Now...who's gonna show up to help me when it's time to do the finishing cuts??

The reason we decided to polish it instead of painting is because A) Per our research, the original Minute Men Sabres were indeed bare metal with int'l red for the painted areas; and B) once we started stripping it, we found that all the layers of paint were there, clear back to the original South African camo scheme...blue primer and all. It would be an understatement to say that it was a miserable b#$%h to strip due to the sheer oxidation of the paint layers, but the metal underneath was in really great shape, it hadn't seen daylight since the '50's.

[CAPFlyer]

Actually, I'd love to come up and help, but unfortunately travel isn't in my cards anytime soon.

Keep us updated on the status of the restoration though, it'll be cool to see it. Too bad the F-16's been repainted. Would've been neat to see the two flying together.

[michael luther]

The short list of fliers:

FU-666 N860AG Belleville Il (just sold?), F model

I didn't know Terry Klingele had an F-86.

[dfrat]

JDK,

While I can see your point, I don't want to get into the weeds on reg numbers etc. My point was just to list the fliers and where they are and who is currently operating them. I knew the CA-27 was on loan from the RAAF but does it really matter on this blog? Temora is operating it after having restored it, to me that's good enough. We can get really weedy and talk about which engines they use too if ya want.


The Yanks Sabre was once owned by Al Hansen. Just like all the other Yanks airplanes, it is supposed to be airworthy, but never flown, such a shame.

moonlight, do we know each other?

[JDK]

While I can see your point, I don't want to get into the weeds on reg numbers etc. My point was just to list the fliers and where they are and who is currently operating them. I knew the CA-27 was on loan from the RAAF but does it really matter on this blog? Temora is operating it after having restored it, to me that's good enough.

It depends on how useful you want your list to be - it's notable that all listings that are of use are hung on registrations (or better, serials or manufacturer nos) while building them on colour schemes is building on sand - as you've shown by the opening shots in the thread.

IM [professional] HO, location of data don't matter - there's good data (as you may recall, I noted your work before when I did this very exercise a year or two back for publication) and bad data. The general American allergy to registrations (as seen here on WIX) breeds endless repetitive and pointless discussions here about 'who owns which airplane painted like this', rather than nailing it in one with a registration.

Neither colours or registrations are secret squirrel stuff (or 'weedy'!) so my view is it's just better to use the one that works.

Temora don't have an airworthy CAC Sabre of their own because the stopped the restoration of theirs and were able to take another route with the RAAF's aircraft. That's also noteworthy. Temora wouldn't have got the RAAF aircraft flying without support from the RAAF Museum.

As I said, it's politically important who the owner is - in some cases, get it wrong in the wrong place, and you'll be hearing from lawyers.

[This based on working with Paul Coggan, publisher of the first comprehensive Warbird Directory.]

Engines? They make the noise don't they?

Cheers,

[CrewDawg]

Does anyone know the latest on Cavanaugh's F-86? Last I heard on the grapevine that it was down for engine work.

[Gary M]

I saw this RAAF Sabre last year being restored at AvSpecs at Admore Airfield, just south of Auckland, New Zealand. It had the Rolls-Royce engine in it, twin 30mm cannons, etc......

[B17news]

what about the plane from "The Last Chase"....a cheesy but kind of cool movie with an F86 in it circa 1981?

[Iclo]

Outside of the US, there is also a F-86 flying in Duxford.

[JDK]

Outside of the US, there is also a F-86 flying in Duxford.

G-SABR, 48-0178 cn 151-43547, correctly listed as "FU-178 Golden Apple Operations UK, A model" by dfrat on the previous page. It's the only 'A' model (split windscreen) airworthy in the world. Outside North America otherwise the the RAAF / TAM CAC Sabre in Australia, and that's it. (Obviously there's our Canadian contingent in N America.)

Regards,