Strange civilian uses of warbird parts

[Andy in West Oz]

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~streetorgan/bbstory2.htm

Cheers

Andy

[tom d. friedman]

i can't even begin to describe what walt soplata has made with some of his airplane parts!!! sections of his house were made from equipment crates too!!

[skymstr02]

Kaman Aircraft in Connecticut had, I believe, two F8F Bearcats for crosswind testing of their helicopters. Elmer Ward restored one of them as "Gulfhawk IV".
BDK, I've actually seen the Corsair wind machine in person. I wish it was mine!
Jerry

Lone Star Flight Museum has the other one replicating a Blue Angel with Butch Voris's markings on it.

[skymstr02]

And the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola has tail hooks as fence posts with chain welded to it.

[Flat 12x2]

Pics of a few Radials alternatively used

http://www.chez.com/pullinghue/rdphotos.html

A a few V12's as well


http://de.geocities.com/smecking/tractors/thetractors.htm

[RickH]

Dave, the tailhooks were all removed some time ago. Most were A-4 hooks best I could tell. We saw them in the big building that was used as a warehouse for the museum. That building has since been torn down due to hurricane damage. It was over by the pier where the Lex used to be.

[bdk]

There was also a DC-3/C-47 motorhome painted up to look like the Space Shuttle.

Here's a link to the story behind this cool idea.

http://www.airportjournals.com/Display. ... ID=0507005

Yup! I saw it at Edwards AFB when the second shuttle flight landed.

[Roger Cain]

I've seen a few wing (T-33?) tanks and drop tanks used along highways for advertising. There's one near Modesto that is made up to look like a fish.........

Drove by it today on my way home from a camping trip. Store was closed, so I couldn't hit the owner up for details. Due to the base, looked like a wingtip tank? Between Modesto and Empire on 132.

[Obergrafeter]

If thats the bait, what are they fishing for?

[Chris Brame]

If thats the bait, what are they fishing for?

TBDs

An old guy in Oklahoma told me once that right after the war when Stearmans were being converted to single seat crop dusters, the go-cart and dune buggy crowd decided that THE seat to have in their rides were surplus Stearman and BT seats. Kinda explains why they're so darn hard to find nowadays.

[Obergrafeter]

Maybe Tighar ought to get that bait and take it with thwm. What weight line should one use?

[Jerry O'Neill]

If THIGAR did take the bait, they'd probably come back with and show everyone that they found the droptank from Amelia's Lockheed 10!
Jerry

[K5DH]

It was popular among postwar hot rodders to use surplus aircraft seats in their cars, especially racers. Today, the so-called "rat rod" crowd still digs them up somewhere and uses them in their "old is new" rods. Many allegedly came from C-45s (obviously not "bomber" seats, but they were called that by the uninitiated).

[Mortmer]

In Lebanon, CT. there is a tail section that looks as if it came from a military jet in a barn yard -

http://spike.cs.umass.edu/~pbinder/tailsection.jpg

Paul