Need help finding Military surplus helicopters

Just for personal use in the Untied States? Good luck with that.... There are tons of cool aircraft and vehicles that people have been drooling over for years with pretty much zero success. A guy I work with would love to get his hands on an OV-10 Bronco and has the money to do it but it seems pretty much impossible unless you are a juiced in contractor or some variety of government agency.

 

The same thing happened after vietnam- that's why most of them didn't end up in civilian hands.

 

Mark,

Aren't the just Bell Jet Rangers?

By the way, there are at least two OV-10s in private hands here's one:

http://www.warbirds-eaa.org/featured/Featured%20Articles%20-%20Vol.%2029,%20No.%2004%20-%20June%202006%20-%20Taming%20the%20Bronco%20-%20OV-10.pdf

Regards,

Art S.

 

Yeah, but it doesn't mean they will just sell them to anyone. It was only recently that you could buy a ratted out surplus hummer.

It always seems like there are one or two of an item that leak out, a few years ago I remember reading about a guy that ended up with an F-18 airframe.

Just to talk crazy.... What would be awesome is if someone was able to buy an Iranian F-14 and bring it back to fly here.

 

The Iranian F-14s are the reason most of ours were scrapped. We wanted to ensure there were few second hand parts floating around to help the Iranians out.

Personally, I'd like something far more stupid, yet obtainable: Mig 25 - you can stand inside the afterburners!!! Think of the fuel consumption! Mach 3+.

Actually, I like Kelly Johnson designs. With enough resources, I'd love an early F-104A (or any Lockheed built version) and one of the Italian hotrod versions.

Regards,

Art S.

 

F-104s for sale are not hard to find...getting the feds to let you fly it is a bit more complicated...

 

This guy has several F-104s:

Starfighters

 

..OV-10 is one cool little twin turbo..
..esp w/a Gatling perched on the snout..
Cheers,
RE

 

It's probably expensive as hell to run but it seems a lot more realistic for most people.... An F-104 would be cool but it seems like a tricky beast that would kill you quick. The OV-10 seems like a poor mans A-10.

 

I think I remember reading the civilians can't have ejection seats. Anyone read or hear of this?

 

Not correct.

 

While the OP is talking about what is most certainly a Jet Ranger, the military maintenance system isn't anything like that of the civil system. This means that things like log books aren't compatible while this is indeed common hardware, there is virtually no way the FAA will accept the maintenance records for a helo that you get as ex military.

That means that you would basically have to rebuild or replace all of the parts like the engine, main rotor gearbox, rotor system, tail rotor and engine before you could fly it as a civil aircraft.

It would be far less expensive to buy an old used up helicopter and restore it that it would be to try to get an ex-military helicopter a civil registration.

Government agencies such as state police or cities can get used government aircraft and there is a path that will let them fly them, but they can't subsequently sell them to the public with civil registration.

At one time there were a couple of programs that were doing re-engining of Huey's for the Border Patrol and for other government agencies, but I don't think that any of these are active right now.

There's also a lot of pressure not to sell these aircraft to other countries for a couple of reasons. The first is that this is considered lost sales of new aircraft for Bell and that is obviously an issue for them. It's also an issue since there's a ton of spares in these aircraft and the big money in aircraft are in spare parts. If these aircraft were parted out that would be millions in part sales lost for both Bell and others.

Rolls-Royce did a buyback deal with the Army when they re-engined the Kiowa Warrior for the sole purpose of keeping those engines out of the hands of the public, even though they had basically no use for these engines (although they are working on some deals that could get them back to use). With these engines RR would have to basically go through them and replace the time limited parts and zero time the engines and then they could sell them on the civil market because the hold the type certificate. Ether that or they can try to find ground use applications and sell them as is, but basically nothing on those engines can be used as flight hardware.

While these are basically Jet Rangers, tying to get one and use it as a civil aircraft isn't going to happen easily or inexpensively.

 

Probably need some licenses for various explosive bits.

 

bought a run out 206A cheap, without an air worthiness cert.... never again...
it was a major money pit... more so for the amount of time it took and the money it tied up during that time... for almost 2 years it was in pieces, not useable, not sale able...just taking up space...with the expenses running wide open

 

don't know anything about the R66 to offer an opinion... the old cliche' "you get what you pay for" really applies to all helicopters...

 

Why do you want a helicopter? Business or pleasure? HQ aviation will teach you to fly and has a jetranger for rent iirc.

http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/article_85944d3f-6315-56df-9f6f-6d435dda6b9e.html?mode=jqm

 

Just a heads up. I've been working as a helicopter mechanic for over 36 years and can confirm that you better have deep pockets to own one. Many components are on calender "life limits" as well as the "hourly life" parts so things are running out just sitting on the ground. There is no such thing as a "cheap" helicopter........

 

Like Ferrari timing belts.............................................