marine air wrote:
An FM-2P it has the larger vertical fin and other late war upgrades. It has a window on the bottom of the fuselage for a camera. I know he installed electric gear retract and a smoke system. It says it was restored in 1981 and out of annual since 2010. The good news is it was anualled by Nelson Ezell and staff for thirty years.
My suggestion would be to make an offer less than $839K with seller to pay for fresh annual by Ezell Aviation. Oh, it had storm damage in 2010 when the tornado came through, so I would imagine it was really gone through at that time. Good Luck!
Just to clarify even though the L-4 is not for sale its a converted J-3.
As far as the Wildkitty, yes it does have smoke(tank located behind pilot seat) but has no electric gear assist. Heck I wish it did then it wouldn't have been so hard! I spent 12 years working on it and
doing the annual. It was hard to crank till you got over-center then it became easy till it was almost home then it got a bit hard until the top. On the way down you never let go of the handle or it would break your hand if you tried to grab it! One time I didn't have a good grip and it went but I dared not try and grab it!
Howard told me in flight the first few cranks were stiff but the airflow would assist with it coming up.
They say you can tell a new Wildcat pilot by the wing-wobble from cranking the gear up, but all the years I saw him fly it... rock solid!!
I hope that the old girl finds a new caretaker that will take care of it as well as Howard did and enjoys it!
Best of luck to ya Ben in persuit of your dream!
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